


Ammazzare o Amare

by JuliaBaggins, raisedtokeepquiet



Category: Eurovision Song Contest RPF, Festival di Sanremo RPF
Genre: (a little unusual first meeting), Alternate Universe, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Roller Coaster, Ermal has the best friends, First Meetings, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Misunderstandings, Panic Attacks, Past Child Abuse, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2019-08-03 04:31:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 56,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16319213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JuliaBaggins/pseuds/JuliaBaggins, https://archiveofourown.org/users/raisedtokeepquiet/pseuds/raisedtokeepquiet
Summary: Ermal is convinced of a certain fact. This man that he keeps seeing late at night, is stalking him. He's stalking him with only one goal in mind: to murder him. But maybe, just maybe, things are not as he thinks they are, though this man certainly has a role to play in his life.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You might remember the firefighter fic we wrote together some time ago, and in there, there was a sentence that went "Because he couldn’t just ask, “Hey, what are your intentions with me?”, because that sounded as if he expected Fabrizio to murder him, at best." And, yeah, somehow, out of that sentence, this story was born. Life goes interesting ways sometimes, and now, 4 weeks and 15k later, we're here. Enjoy reading!

Ermal was making his way through the busy streets of Rome. He had agreed to meet Marco for a drink and a chance to catch up. Usually, he would be annoyed by the crowds of people rushing home after work, but since a few weeks, he rather liked it. It felt safe, somehow. It was a nice contrast from how empty the streets were at night, empty and dark and dangerous. He had never thought that before, of the dark streets, and he was well familiar with them. Not necessarily with those of Rome, but of Bari, sure. Never, not once, had he thought that the darkness of night was something to avoid. If anything, it gave the city a blanket to keep in all the lights and all the life.

All that had changed a few weeks ago, when he first realized something was going on. There was a man he kept seeing, but only at night, in the dark streets he walked home from the bus stop after work. At first he'd thought it was just a coincidence, but he had changed his mind. He kept seeing him at the weirdest hours, at the weirdest places, he was absolutely everywhere where Ermal was. But only in the dark.

"No, Marco, listen, I swear this guy is stalking me!"

"Ermal, calm down, why on earth would anyone stalk you? You're just going about your life, there is no reason for anyone to stalk you. I'm sure it's just a coincidence!"

Ermal stayed silent, he didn't want to push this, Marco clearly was done with his talks about being stalked when he came home from work at night, but he was sure, he was being stalked. And he knew why. This man, he was a murder. And he was out to get Ermal. He was out to get Ermal, and then Marco would be sorry for ignoring him. For now though, there was nothing else to do but allow Marco to change the topic, and pretend everything was fine.

Yes, he had gone to Marco with this rather than Andrea because he expected him to be more rational, to not get too worried himself, but now... Ermal had thought that Marco would at least take him a little more serious. Oh well. He took another sip of his beer and tried to concentrate on the conversation about a new album of a band they both liked.

He tried to concentrate, but he knew his efforts didn't really live up to the expectation, and he knew he wasn't really great company tonight. Rather than make them both suffer through this, he pleaded a headache, and said he'd go home early. Marco shot him a look that told Ermal exactly how much he believed of that, but he ignored it, and went home. It were just a few streets to his apartment, but it was dark, and Ermal couldn't help but glance over his shoulder half the time and flinch everytime the streetlights showed his own shadow in front of him. To his relief, he reached his home without any incidents, and without seeing that man in the distance.

A week passed, and Ermal didn't see the stalker again, he was busy with his shifts at work, with their little music project, and that almost was enough to have him forget about this man. Almost. And then, on a cold Thursday night, he had to hurry to the bus from work, he nearly had missed it because his manager insisted on a very pointless talk where he told Ermal the same thing three times, and when Ermal finally could see the bus stop, the bus already was standing there. So he started running, and he made it, even if it was just barely - out of breath and with his lungs burning from the cold night air, Ermal got inside the bus, showed his ticket to the driver, and quickly sat down at the next best seat before the bus started to speed through the traffic. During the drive, Ermal tried to catch his breath, and he didn't pay much attention to his surroundings, to the bus' other passengers.

Finally, they'd reached his stop, and he was happy to be almost home, to almost have that chance of crashing down on the couch and do nothing all evening. Only - oh God, was that....? It was. The man. Ermal saw him from the corner of this eye when he got off, and in the light of the bus got a better view of the man than he had before. He was wearing a black hoodie - of course he was - with the sleeves rolled up. Ermal could see the man's many tattoos, and also many rings that glittered in the cold artificial light. But seeing the man again was not the worst of it. No. He had gotten up too. Ready to get off the bus too. Ready to follow Ermal. Ready to kill Ermal. Murder him in cold blood. Ermal knew it.

At first he thought he might be able to make it home in time, live another day, but he heard rushing footsteps behind him, and he knew he couldn't outrun this man. He was pulled from the dark spiral of his thoughts by a voice.  _ His  _ voice.

"Hey! Wait!"

Like hell he would wait. He did not want to die. So Ermal walked a bit faster, though really, now it could hardly be called walking anymore. Also, just to be sure, he sent a short, quick voice note to Marco. He would make sure that if everything went wrong, they at least knew to look for a body.

He tried to walk a little faster, to run, but he wasn't in the most sporty shape, especially not after running all the way to the bus just minutes earlier. And the faster Ermal walked, trying to ignore the burning in his sides, the faster he could also hear the footsteps behind him getting. Those were the only noises audible, in this little side street there was no traffic noise anymore, no other people, no - there was just Ermal's breathing, and those steps following him. And he feared that if the second would get even faster, the first might end this night.

So he did they only thing that might save him. Wasn't attacking the best defense? Now, he wasn't stupid. He knew he would not win a direct confrontation with this man. He might have a slight advantage as far as height went, but definitely not on weight. Or muscles. So in some kind of sly action worthy of a superhero (well, maybe not a superhero, but surely the underdog who was secretly a superhero) he hid behind a car and quickly extended his leg. He shouldn't have waited one more second, because his pursuer was already right there. But his plan worked, because the man was not expecting this, and tripped over Ermal's leg. Down, he was lying on the street. Ermal 1, murderer 0.

The murderer blinked, obviously confused, and Ermal couldn't help a little satisfied smile at seeing him down there at the ground. Maybe, just maybe, he'd actually get to see the sun again. And wasn't that a nice thought. The problem was just that Ermal hadn't thought further than to make sure his want to be murderer would end up at the ground, and now, the man seemed to try to get up. Oh no. 

Ermal stepped out behind the car - yes, he was giving up his hiding spot here, but as soon as he would have tried to run away from behind it, the man on the ground also would have noticed it. So Ermal decided to choose the moment himself, to approach him, to hide as well as possible how very scared he was inside. When the man, the murderer, saw him, his eyes widened. There was even more confusion now, and Ermal wondered if there had been other victims earlier, if he was not used to them fighting back. Well, whatever this man was used to, whatever he expected, whatever he had planned - Ermal surely wouldn't stop fighting.

Used or not to his victims fighting back, the man’s surprise was quickly overcome and he still kept trying to get up, get up and get back his advantage. And then murder Ermal. No, no, no. So Ermal did the only thing he could think of to  _ stop _ him. He sat down heavily on the man’s chest, pinning his arms to his side to keep him on the ground. Now, he wanted answers, and he opened his mouth to ask for, no,  _ demand _ them, after all, he now had the upper hand in this, but before he could say anything, the man beat him to it.

“Woah, what are you doing? Could you please get off me and let me get up?!” 

“No!” Ermal responded, while trying to keep the struggling man underneath him, well, underneath him. “First you’re going to tell me why you have been following me. You want to murder me, right, that’s it, isn’t it?!”

At that, the man stilled and gave up his attempts to escape. That was as good as a confession. 

“ _ Murder you? _ Have you completely lost your mind? I am not! Let me go! I’ll scream for help! Someone will call the police!” 

" _ You _ want to get the police called? While _ I'm _ being murdered? Oh, I'm glad they'd be delighted to catch you, they've probably been looking for you for quite some time already! How many people have it been, hm? How many- Oh, oh  _ no _ , don't you dare!" 

The man underneath Ermal had tried to reach into his hoodie's pocket with one of his hands, and that, he couldn't allow. In the previous days, Ermal might have imagined himself getting shot in a dark alley quite often, bleeding out in a place like that, and suddenly, another thought appeared in his mind. What if the man instead of a gun had a knife, wanted to make it slow with that, and now, Ermal had positioned himself in the perfect stabbing distance. Oh damn. He moved his left knee a bit, so it pinned the murderer's hand to the ground, and noticed with a hint of satisfaction underneath his fear, all the adrenaline, that he stopped trying to reach his pocket, how his fingers stilled underneath Ermal's knee. 

"I see you imagined me to be an easy victim, isn't it so? Skinny dude walking around at night all alone, did you think I couldn't defend myself? That no one would notice, no one would miss me? Well, I'm sorry to prove you wrong, but you've chosen the wrong victim!" 

The man's eyes had widened during Ermal's speech, and now he just looked up, an expression Ermal couldn't quite place in his dark eyes. And his body seemed to be trembling a little.

“P-Please,” the man managed, "I swear I'm not trying to murder you. Please let me up? Right now I rather feel in danger of being murdered. Honestly, it's getting hard to breathe."

Ermal only tightened his hold, while letting out a dry chuckle.

"You dare to say  _ I  _ plan to murder  _ you _ ? After not so subtly following me for weeks, getting closer and closer, until you saw your chance tonight? Don't think I didn't notice you!"

"No, please, I wasn't following you. I also do not want to murder you!" the man gasped, "Why don't you let me up and we can talk about this?" The man had another weak attempt at getting up.

"Oh, no!" Ermal said and pushed him down again, "I can see what you're trying to do, but it won't work! Playing all innocent now, telling me that you just want to talk, and then? Lure me into a side alley maybe? You want to get me to some place abandoned, where no one will notice what you're going to do!"

“What are you talking about, I would never! Please, I'm begging you, just release me, and then-"

"And then you can get your knife out of your pocket once I let you go?"

"Knife?", the man gasped, and for a split second, Ermal almost believed his confusion. Almost. 

"I haven't got a knife!"

"Alright, let's say I would believe your words, which I don't, but let us just entertain the thought here.. What are you even doing here at this hour, all alone, following people? Hm? Got a good answer for that?" 

The man bit his lip and when he talked again, his voice didn't contain any anger anymore, barely confusion, there mostly was fear that sounded faked quite well. 

"I'm on my way home from work, I live just around the corner so that's my bus stop, please just believe me, you're scaring me here and, oh lord, let me go, I won't tell anyone about this, I promise you, you won't get into any troubles, but  _ please _ , I've got kids-", and at mentioning the children, the man's breath hitched. 

And Ermal thought about his words, his last sentence. "If you're telling the truth and you actually are a father then you definitely shouldn't be out in the nightly streets to murder people! Think of what it will do to them, knowing you to be a criminal, having you in prison for years and years to come!"

Ermal looked deep into the man's eyes, as well as he could in the low light, and there, he saw tears glistening. Tears that seemed nearly genuine, and the man whispered something, in a broken voice, something that sounded a little like "Ani won't understand why I never came home", and when he closed his eyes, a tear escaped out of the corner of his eye, and Ermal paused.

It seemed the man had now struck a line of thought that spiraled deeper and deeper. His tears came faster now, and he struggled for breath, both from Ermal still sitting on his chest and the lump that was now closing up his throat. 

Fabrizio kept staring at the man sitting on top of his chest, taking his breath away in all the wrong ways, and his thoughts were spiraling. Hopes, confusion, worries, fears, but most prominently, there were regrets. And Fabrizio had quite a few things to regret. The first one he thought of was how sorry he was to have told his daughter, his little darling Anita, that they couldn't afford this green talking teddy bear that she had looked at with heart eyes every time they passed the store. And it had been a lie, at least a little - yes, it was expensive, but nothing could be too expensive for his princess, and Fabrizio had planned to buy the teddy for her next birthday. Only that now, he wasn't even sure if he would live to see her next birthday. And that thought nearly was enough to shatter his heart into pieces.

Next, Fabrizio thought of his mom - he regretted not calling her more often, and he wasn't even sure what their last conversation had been about. What would her last memory of her son be? Would she be able to get over this?

Then of course, there was Libero, his son in whom Fabrizio saw himself so often. His son with whom he hadn't watched Juve's champions league match yesterday. Libero had asked so hesitant if just maybe, maybe Fabri would be able to switch his shift at the bar to be able to see the game together, and Fabrizio had said no. Because he already knew that one of his colleagues was ill, he had been convinced that his manager would have said no anyways. So he hadn't even asked. But what he had done instead was that he had promised his son that they would watch the next game together, in two weeks things at the bar should be a little less stressful. And he had thought about how maybe, if he did some extra shifts in long summer nights, he'd one day be able to take his son to actually see a champions league match in a stadium. Would he still be able to do that? Or would he continue to regret not having watched the game with his son for the rest of his probably very short life? Were the stories they had told at church when he was a child true; would he be able to see how his son was doing in his own football matches from up there?

Other things spiraled through Fabrizio's mind, more regrets - he had never told his friend Roberto that he actually liked the rather crazy way in which he dressed, and he just hoped that the man knew how Fabrizio's teasing always had been good natured. Furthermore, Fabrizio regretted not buying himself some of that deliciously good looking ice cream earlier - what good was in the few euros more he had in his pockets now? The ice cream would have been a nice little moment in the middle of his last day, a moment to smile, and now, this curly haired man who oh so clearly must have lost his mind would just steal his money anyways.

Ermal looked down on him, listened to the man’s broken whispers, the sobs, only names occasionally audible. The emotions, the fear, the despair, the  _ tears _ , they seemed rather… genuine. 

They seemed very genuine.

Slowly, doubt started to enter Ermal’s mind. What if he made a terrible mistake? What if he was mistaken? What if Marco was right and it was all just a coincidence? Oh no, oh nonono… 

But he had been so sure. So convinced this man was out to murder him. But now, he wasn’t so sure anymore. This seemed rather a lot to fake.

“Anita won’t even remember my face once she’s grown up,” the man hiccuped, louder, and that set him off into more sobbing, but silent now, Ermal could see the tears rolling down his cheeks and feel him shaking as the man kept gasping for breath.

Maybe it would be a good idea to get off of him and let him stand up? He didn’t seem so dangerous anymore. He just looked terrified and sad and Ermal felt rather bad about it. How could he have been so mistaken? How could this happen? 

So, awkwardly, Ermal scrambled off the man and onto his feet, then extended a hand to offer to help the man up.

It took some time though, for him to notice the change in the situation, the weight lifting off his chest, and he just kept looking at Ermal and his hand stupidly, trying to get this breath back, trying to get his sobbing under control.

“I am… um… sorry?” Ermal tries, not sure how to fix this, not sure at all, hoping the man would just take his hand and get up, because this advantage of looking down on a man lying on the ground now was actually very uncomfortable.

After staring up at him for a few moments in which Ermal wished the ground would swallow him, the man finally took Ermal's hand, a little hesitant, and allowed him to help him onto his feet. Once the man standing, Ermal realized that they were nearly the same height, and somehow, up this close and with slight tremors still running through his body, the stranger didn't look like a crazy murderer anymore, not at all. They kept looking at each other, and finally, the man spoke. And Ermal was glad to hear that he didn't sound as heartbroken as earlier anymore, when he talked about his dear Anita.

"Did you really think I was trying to murder you?"

Ermal looked down, as if his shoes were the most interesting thing, and then admitted his earlier thoughts.

"Yes? I mean, I've noticed you following me a few times already, and now you kept coming closer, calling for me, here in this abandoned alley, and, well, now it really does sound stupid", and Ermal trailed off.

"A little, yeah", the stranger laughed a little awkwardly, and Ermal was impressed with how fast he seemed to get his calm back. And then the man continued, "About the following you today - that's why."

The tattooed man put his hand into the pocket at the front of his hoodie, and Ermal tensed a little, he couldn't help it. Not when just minutes ago he had been convinced that this was the hiding place of the knife that would end his life.

The other man just shot him a look as he noticed, but apparently chose to ignore it. Ermal then watched as slowly the object from inside the pocket was revealed - a bit nervous he was, time seeming to drag on. Finally, it was out in the open, and then man extended his tattooed hand to show the thing to Ermal. And it was.. some sort of fabric. Fabric?

"This is yours, I believe?", the man said, and Ermal just got more and more confused.

"Mine?"

"Yeah, you left it on the bus, so I thought I'd give it back."

Something began to dawn and Ermal reached up a hand to his head to find... only curls. His beanie. Oh lord, Ermal could remember how he had taken it off in the bus, it had been quite warm inside there, and then, he had forgotten it. And this man, this stranger with whom he had never spoken a word, had decided to go out of his way to return his lost beanie to Ermal. He could have just left it be, or given it to the bus driver, but no, it seemed that he wanted to make sure that Ermal got it back. And the thanks he got was Ermal attacking him. Accusing him of murder plans. Making him fear for his life.

“I- Thank you. I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry,” he finally stammered, not sure if those words were going to be enough. They were not, right? How could they be? How could those few little words make up for all this? How could you be so delusional that you accidentally think - be absolutely convinced - that someone wants to murder you, when all they want to do is give back something you lost? Ermal knows these words are not enough, and if the roles were reversed, he was pretty sure he would be contemplating actual murder at this point. 

“Please, I am truly very sorry, for everything. I don’t know- I mean, I have no excuses, I am just sorry. Can I… Can I maybe make it up to you in any way?” 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The not-a-murder meeting continues. Ermal wonders how he can ever make up for his behaviour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nice to see you again! Let yourself be surprised :)

A bit lost Ermal waited for a reply. He knew it was ridiculous, asking if he could make up for plainly _assaulting_ this man, he should just call the police and let Ermal be carted off to some police station and press charges. It would be his good right.

Suddenly, a strange sound filled the quiet night air. It took a little time for Ermal to realize the man was… laughing? Had he hit his head when Ermal sent him to the ground? Did he hurt himself? Have a concussion? Why on earth would he be laughing, there was nothing, _nothing_ , funny about this situation. Uncomprehending, he watched the man, who now leaned against the wall of the apartment building they were standing next to, trying to catch his breath to compose himself.

“Libero will love this story,” he finally said, by way of explanation, though Ermal did not understand anything. He just kept staring, waiting to see if there would be more to come, if anything would start to make sense. Because, to be honest, things had been kind of senseless for a while now.

“Oh sorry, that’s my son.”

“Your son. So you really have children? I am so, so sorry, I really am. I can’t believe I was this stupid. All I can say is I’m sorry for this whole mess… Please, tell me, how can I make it up to you? I’ll do anything!”

“Anything?” came the reply to that speech, complete with a raised eyebrow and an indecipherable expression.

“Anything except murder. Okay?” Ermal tried to joke, failing, but this whole situation was still so _mad_ , absolutely crazy, and that _anything_ was making him a bit nervous. Didn’t people usually say it was okay and then _suggest_ something that could be done? Not focus all mysteriously on that word, that word that had so many possible interpretations. Oh god, what would he have to do? Was it already too late to take it back?

The man seemed to think about Ermal's words, and then he looked at him, before he started talking again, a little hesitant.

"This may seem a very strange thing to say, especially when we think of the situation we've been in just a few moments ago, but still.. Oh I shouldn't ask this, should I? Or maybe-"

Ermal had no idea where the other man was going with his speech, but he was determined to make it up to him, however he could.

"I really shouldn't ask this", the man murmured, and Ermal tried an encouraging expression on his face.

"Try me?", Ermal then asked, aware that this might be dangerous, aware that there were oh so many ways in which this might go. Some of those in which he'd maybe lose all his money, the nice watch that Gigi had gotten him for his birthday, some in which he'd get caught up in some shady business deals, and some in which Ermal would end up on his knees...

"Well you gotta know, my daughter's birthday is next week, and she's invited basically her whole class, so that means looking out for dozens of over excited 6-year-olds, and I could certainly need some help there. But Ani's mom has got this important business meeting, and I- Damn, I don't even know how I got the idea to ask you out of all people here, but maybe? Like, if you turn out to be trustworthy, I'd ask you to help me in looking out for the kids, and then we can let this be?", the man rambled, and Ermal was rather surprised. His mind had gone in quite a lot of different directions, but certainly in none of them had he been helping in a birthday party for kids.

"For someone who wrestles me down a few kids certainly can't be a challenge, right?", the man added, and Ermal almost chuckled at that. Almost. He blinked at the man, still thinking about his words. A child's party didn't sound too bad, but _if he turned out to be trustworthy,_  what was that supposed to mean? Of course it made sense that the man wouldn't just let anyone be around his kids, but how should Ermal prove this? What did he expect him to do? And why did he even ask if he didn't trust Ermal, which was logical, he had done everything to not deserve his trust, and yet? The stranger had asked this, God knows why, and somehow, Ermal felt himself wanting to earn that trust. He wanted to help this man, help his children, and he may also have wanted the man to trust him, to deem him trustworthy, even if it was just a little.

"Trustworthy?" Ermal repeated the word still going around in circles in his head, slowly, as if that would make the whole thing more clear. The man just continued to look at him, so Ermal had no choice but to continue.

"How… How exactly would I prove myself to be trustworthy?"

He looked at the tattooed man, wondering what the answer would be. The man seemed to think about this, and Ermal wondered if he regretted mentioning the whole party thing. If he regretted talking to Ermal at all.

"Well, a good start would be to tell me your name. I can hardly introduce you as 'the man who thought I'd murder him'", and once again, there was a chuckle. A chuckle that had Ermal wondering how on earth he could have ever suspected this man to being out to stalk him, hurt him, end his life.

"Oh. Oh yes, right. I'm Ermal. Ermal Meta. Nice to... meet you?"

He had added the polite remark out of habit though he had realized some time ago that there was in fact very little that was nice about this whole first meeting. And oh, Ermal wondered when thinking about his own thoughts, where did this _first_ come from? Before he could get deeper into this matter though, the other man spoke again. And finally, Ermal learned the name of the man whom he had suspected to be lurking around in the dark, waiting to steal away unsuspecting Albanians. The man who had given him back his beanie, the one that his grandma had knitted for him, and who now wanted Ermal to prove that he was a trustworthy person. Whatever his name turned out to be, Ermal was sure that this man was a rather interesting person.

"I'm Fabrizio Mobrici. See Ermal, this is much better already, isn't it?"

“Yes?” Ermal replied to that, and he couldn’t help the question in his voice. Hadn’t the man - Fabrizio - said this was a start? What else was there? It didn’t seem Fabrizio was going to continue without another prompt.

“And?” he said, but hastily continued when he realized that sounded rather rude. “I mean, what can I do?”

The answer took some time coming, and Fabrizio only stared at his shoes, one lace had come undone, he saw. As did Ermal, following his gaze. He knew what he could do. He crouched down, and started tying it, a bit clumsily, somehow it was different if it was someone else’s shoe.

“What are you doing?” A shocked voice sounded through the dark night.

Ermal looked up, meeting Fabrizio’s eyes that looked just as shocked as he had sounded. He didn’t bother replying, quite sure that it was obvious. And he was done anyway. So he stood back up again, and said, “Where were we? Right, you were telling me what I can do, besides telling you my name.”

“Do?” Fabrizio said, his voice a bit hoarse. Tiredness, surely. “Nothing. Nothing. This is not something I should have asked you. I guess I’m just stressing out about this party business more than I thought, and also you might be the first adult I’ve talked to who’s not either a complaining customer or at work themselves… God, I’m talking nonsense now. I’m sorry. I’ll just go… home.”

He turned to go, brushing past Ermal as he did so, and that slight touch was enough to shake him from the daze he’d fallen in.

“No, wait, I really meant it, I want to make this up to you somehow, there is nothing that excuses my behaviour tonight, and I should try to make amends for it. So, the party? I can help! - And I really am trustworthy!”

There was a silence after that, and Ermal couldn’t help but cringe as he processed what he had been saying. Wouldn’t only untrustworthy people emphasize how incredibly trustworthy they were? There was no way on earth Fabrizio was going to believe him, after all, he’d done nothing the whole night to give any kind of good impression. Rather the opposite, in fact. And yet, Fabrizio had stopped his hasty steps, though he hadn’t turned back to Ermal yet. So he tried once more. Once more, in despair. Because he actually _was_ trustworthy. And there was something in him that refused to let this go, to let this man go without being convinced of the same, or at least on his way to that conviction.

“I mean, I swear I just want to help. With the party. I can do that. If you’d let me? Um, maybe we could… meet in daylight? Better circumstances? Try this all again? - No, wait, I mean, do this over, like polite people? Not that you weren’t polite - you have been nothing but polite, it’s all me, I know it’s all me. I mean-”

Finally, Ermal managed to shut himself up, which was a feat in itself. Damn, that was possibly the most useless speech he had given since he was nineteen, trying to ask out that girl that he had turned down four times before. He was a disaster, and he had really messed it up now. There was nothing to do than learn to live with the fact that Fabrizio would hate him now forever.

Except, he had turned around after all? And was now looking at Ermal with a slight smirk on his face? Ermal wasn’t sure if that was better, it made him feel rather ridiculous. But then, he was behaving ridiculously, so probably deserved that.

“Why don’t we meet for coffee sometime to talk it over?” Fabrizio suggested suddenly, and Ermal could only gape at him.

Had he heard that correctly, was Fabrizio really proposing coffee, like two normal people, meeting under normal circumstances? Was this really his second chance?

“Yes, yes, that sounds good!” he managed to say, finally, and it earned him a rather nice smile from the other man.

“What about Saturday, three o’clock, do you know that cafe called Alfredo?”

Ermal could only nod, and then found himself looking at Fabrizio’s back again, disappearing in the distance. He stood there for a while, on the dark sidewalk, until he shook his head and made his way home. It was time to sleep, and try to put this whole mess behind him.

 

Fabrizio usually didn't wake up his kids when he came home late after work, he just let them sleep in peace after the babysitter put them to bed, but this evening, he didn't - he sat at the edge of Libero's bed, softly touching his hair until the boy woke up, and when Libero blinked half an eye open, muttered "what's going on?" in an accent so heavy that Fabri would have problems to understand him if it wouldn't sound so much like home, Fabri just took him into his arms, held him tight and whispered, "Nothing, it's all alright, and I love you so much."

And he went to Anita, just watched her for a while, a long while, she looked so peaceful, asleep, and Fabrizio thought back to those awful... Seconds? Minutes? Hours? that he thought he would never see her again. He wanted to let her sleep, only brushed softly a hand over her head, and tucked her in, but she woke up anyway. Woke up, as if she could sense how much he would like to see her responding and alive, no matter how sweet she slept.

"Papa, you're home!" she said, voice thick with sleep, and with the most beautiful smile, she pulled his hand toward her to hug it with both arms, and snuggled deeper under the covers. "I'm glad. I love you, papa."

Before fabrizio could react, she was asleep again. He stayed there longer, no matter how tired he was himself, he could not bear to pull himself out of her grip and leave her. And seated as he was on the edge of the bed, it was not so very uncomfortable. He'd had worse, tonight.

While Fabrizio watched his daughter's sleeping face a little longer and then went to his own bed, falling into the pillows exhausted from all that had happened earlier, some other people in the city couldn't sleep all that well...

_Beep_

"Ermal? It's Marco. Listen, please call me back. This really isn't funny, leaving me such a voicemail and then not answering a single text. Call me!"

_Beep_

"Ermal I swear, if you fell asleep at the sofa or are having an extra long shower right now..."

_Beep_

"Ermal. Call me. Please, please call me back. Even if it's just to tell me that you indeed fell asleep. Or anything. Just tell me you're okay. "

_Beep_

"Ermal? It's Andrea. Marco told me to call you, though I'm not sure why, he was going on about how you're murdered? Or something? I didn’t understand, really, but can you please just call him?"

_Beep_

"Hey bro, can you please call back your friends? I'm not sure how they've got my number, but someone called Marco just asked me if I had heard from you today, and this was a little weird? So, yeah, call them please, and also call me? Yeah, that's it, and oh, mom says hi! Love you."

_Beep_

“Ermal, fuck it, I’m coming over, it’s been hours now, and I haven’t slept at all. I swear, if you are just in your bed like nothing is wrong, I will kill you myself!”

 

Ermal woke up very suddenly the next morning. Very suddenly, and very… well, violently. He woke up because something suddenly dropped on top of him. Something, or rather someone, he found out when he opened his eyes wide and lay there, unmoving, scared, again. What was this, what now? After last night all he wanted was some sleep, proper sleep to forget exactly how stupid he’d been.

“You absolute asshole,” the someone shouted in his ear, “How can you leave a message like _that_ and just be asleep peacefully. You know what I did not do? Sleep! Peacefully or otherwise. Because I thought my friend was lying dead in some alley, murdered by a madman. But here you are, perfectly fine, alive, healthy, in one piece. Well, you know what, not for long!”

“Marco? What are you doing?” Ermal finally managed to choke out, seeing that the someone was just his friend, not some stranger who might be out to rob him or murder him. Though Marco seemed to have plans quite like that second option, it seemed.

"Making sure that you're alive, you asshole", Marco grumbled, and hugged Ermal a little tighter. "Care to explain why you scared me like that? And especially, why after you knew that you very much weren't being murdered, you didn't call me again? When you knew that you had overreacted with that message, that there was no stranger in the shadows following you?"

"But there was", Ermal whispered, and Marco stopped. He let Ermal go a little to look into his eyes. And when he spoke again, his tone was a lot less furious.

"Excuse me?"

"The man, the one whom I kept seeing", Ermal started to explain, "He was there, and he kept following me. And then he called out for me, and Marco, I've been so scared. I'm sorry that I've upset you with that message, but I really couldn't think clear, and then, when he nearly reached me - "

"I'm sorry, he what?"

"Marco, I couldn't outrun him and he got closer and closer."

"And then what? Ermal, what happened?" Marco's voice was soft now, he just had no idea what was going on anymore, Ermal was not murdered, no, but _something_ had happened...

"Well I... Attacked him, got him to the ground and -"

"You did _what_?!" Marco sounded shocked, and Ermal wasn't sure if it was a compliment. Probably not.

"I know, I'm not proud of it. It was - a lapse of judgement."

"A lapse of... Ermal, what the fuck were you thinking?"

"It's not as if I could outrun him..." Ermal tried to defend himself, and faltered. He did not want to explain to Marco that he had been right after all, that it had all been just a coincidence and some overactive imagination on his side.

"So you had him on the ground and then what?"

Ermal carefully avoided Marco's eyes, while he mumbled, "Then it became apparent that he was not trying to murder me."

He could feel the "I told you so" hanging in the air between them, but Marco was kind enough to not say that.

He just continued to look at Ermal for a moment, and then his curiosity got the best of him.

"And how did you come to that shocking conclusion? What made him seem like less of a murderer?"

Ermal still wouldn't meet Marco's eyes, and he tried to get his following words out as fast as possible.

"I might have scared him, quite a lot, and he started crying and talking about his children and I swear I didn't mean to, I really was scared myself, and he had just wanted to give me back my beanie but it took me so long to believe that."

That was quite a lot of information, and he didn't understand all of it, but Marco felt that it wasn't the right time to ask for details on what Ermal had already told. He just needed to hear how this rather unusual encounter had ended, and that Ermal had gotten home safely.

"And then?", Marco asked gently, and laid an arm around Ermal's body. Ermal then rested his head at Marco's shoulder, and continued to talk.

"I apologized, and he didn't even call the police, and then we talked, and Marco, can you believe that he actually was nice? Like, really nice? He wasn't even angry at me."

"I'm glad", Marco murmured. For now, he only was glad that first, there hadn't been an actual murderer, and second, that the man Ermal had thought to be one hadn't reacted as badly to being attacked by Ermal as one might have. So much could have gone wrong that night, and Marco thanked a God he didn't always believe in that it hadn't.

“But you worried me so much, please, next time - though let’s hope there won’t be one - tell me that you are in fact not murdered!”

Ermal looked apologetically at Marco. He had come home, and just collapsed into bed, barely taking time to change out of his clothes. He had never thought of what that voice message might have done to Marco.

“I’m sorry, I really am. It won’t happen again, I’ll let you know how things end from now on, I promise.”

Marco nodded, and got up. In the doorway, he turned around.

“Shall we have breakfast together then, now I’m here anyway? We can go out to that nice place on the corner. - Yes? Okay, great. I’ll be downstairs. Oh, and Ermal, maybe you should call Andrea. And your brother. Sorry about that.”

With that, Marco disappeared from view, and Ermal got his phone out, seeing all the worried messages and missed calls there. He went through them, and his guilt grew with every one. How did he manage to forget to let his friends know he was safe and sound at home? He should have known that they would worry, even regardless of that last voice message to Marco. Sighing, he dialed the first number.

"Yes?", a rather tired voice answered the phone.

"Andrea, it's Ermal-"

" _Ermal,_ my goodness, are you okay?"

"Yes, I am, everything is-"

"You haven't gotten murdered?"

"Andrea, calm down, please. Would I call you if I had been murdered?"

"Who knows? You might have been turned into a zombie, or whatever."

Ermal ran a hand through his curls and tried not to laugh. He knew that Andrea had been worried, honestly worried, and he also knew that it had been a mistake to have a horror movie night two weeks prior.

"Believe me, I'm not a zombie. I'm fine, I'm at home, nothing bad has happened. I'll tell you the story Sunday or so, alright?"

Andrea agreed to that, sounding half asleep again now he knew Ermal was safe at home, and they hung up. Next phone call.

“Ermal, is that you?”

“Yes, hi Rinald.” Ermal didn’t really know what to say next, he had no idea what Marco had told Rinald in the middle of the night.

“Did you call your friend, Marco was it? He seemed pretty upset that you weren’t answering your phone. Is everything alright?”

Ermal sighed. This would teach him not to worry his friends, it just snowballed out of control.

“I’m totally fine, I’m absolutely, totally unmurdered -”

“Murdered?! What is going on, is this just some strange in-joke you’re dragging me into?”

“No, it’s not, or wait, yes it is. Sorry about that. Won’t happen again, I’ll tell Marco not to call you again with these random pranks. Sorry!”

Before Rinald could say another word, Ermal had hung up, he didn’t need this story to circulate in his family, he would never hear the end of it. He probably never would anyway, with his friends knowing the details.

Therewhile, Fabrizio's family already learned about the nightly encounter, at least a part of it. Fabrizio had slept well, but not too long, and so he already sat in the kitchen with a cup of orange tea when Libero padded in there in the morning, socks that Fabri's brother had knitted on his feet. Fabrizio ruffled his hair and made his son a hot chocolate before they sat down together at the sofa - there still was a little time before Libero had to get ready for school, and they had a little tradition of watching the sport news together in the mornings, if there was enough time. Only that today, Libero didn't seem to be all too interested in the euro league matches.

"Papa, you were home a little late yesterday, Alice put us to bed and you weren't there yet", Libero stated, and Fabrizio wondered how much he should tell him. If he should explain why the babysitter had wished his kids a good night while he had feared to never see them again. And Libero hadn't asked anything, but the question was there, in his eyes, and Fabrizio couldn't resist, couldn't help but tell him at least a little.

"When I was walking home from the bus stop, there was a man, and he was a little.. confused. He thought he knew me, which he didn't, and I, I tripped over his leg. It took us a moment to figure things out, that's why I was late, but it all is alright now."

"So the man didn't know you?"

"No, he mistook me for someone I'm not. It was strange, a little bit, but we solved it all. You know how adults sometimes are a little bit strange, yes?"

"I do", Libero answered, and laughed, "But will you meet him again, that strange man?"

"Yes, yes I actually will", Fabrizio said, and he did so with a smile.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is time for that coffee date, the one they both have been looking forward to. That date during which Ermal will make a good impression, and during which Fabrizio will have a chance to get to know him better. Right?

Fabrizio cursed under his breath. Today had been a shit day, starting with his alarm clock not working in the morning, Anita being unable to find her favourite jacket when he was about do drop his kids off at their mom's place which led to his little darling getting rather angry, especially at him, as he dared to suggest wearing another jacket, then his boss had refused to give him an evening off on tuesday in two weeks, so he would have to disappoint Libero _again_ , and usually, it was calm at the bar around lunchtime, but today it hadn't been, some already drunk kids walking in and thinking it would be funny to insult the other customers. Fabrizio had intervened there, to which the kids had called his boss, and it all had been Fabri's fault of course. Then, one of them had knocked over a tray filled with glasses while walking out, looking Fabrizio straight in the eyes with a smile, and as one of his colleagues deemed this a good time to leave early for "important personal matters" (that Fabri knew to be her lover wanting attention, he had caught part of their call earlier during his break), it had been Fabri's job to clean that all up. And then, he had cut his hand open on one of the glass shards, causing it to bleed rather violently, and after slightly panicking about that, searching for a first aid kit and taking care of the wound, he realized how late it already was.

So he rushed out of the bar and started to hurry through the streets towards Alfredo’s, his face as grim as if someone had just accused him of being a liar in the most terrible ways, or as if someone had kidnapped his loved ones.

Finally, he made it to the cafe, just a little bit late. He spotted the dark head of curls who had so suddenly and incomprehensibly accused him of murder. That feature he at least remembered from the dark night. Ermal. His name he remembered too.

Fabrizio slalomed through the tables in the busy cafe and then let himself fall into the chair opposite Ermal. He had made it. At his appearance, Ermal looked up sharply from the little salt shaker in his hands he had been toying with, shaking his curls back as he did so.

“Fabrizio, good that you could make it!”

Fabrizio only mumbled something in response, shrugging out of his jacket and trying to find that switch in his mind that would magically make his mood a little better, so that this meeting would go better than his day so far had been.

“Listen, I just wanted to say, again, how incredibly sorry I am for - for everything. I still have no excuses, there _are_ no excuses. Please, I hope you can forgive me, I am so sorry. Really, I’m so glad you came today, I couldn’t stop thinking of how _stupid_ I was. I’m sorry!”

Fabrizio closed his eyes briefly against this flood of words, and then looked up, meeting Ermal’s.

“Stop saying you’re sorry, it’s alright, really,” he started, and wanted to finish, he really did, but his mind briefly lost the ability to form sentences when he looked into that face, that looked so different in daylight, a soft and apologetic expression on Ermal’s face, a slight smile, uncertainty and nerves in his eyes, all framed by those lovely curls...

He kept looking at Ermal's face, those dark eyes oh so captivating, and the question how his own face might look to the man sitting opposite from him didn't cross Fabrizio's mind. What he might make out of how Fabri had stormed into the cafe, how his shitty day had inked lines into his face. How the beginning of a headache hammering at his temples caused him to furrow his brow, sigh in annoyance.

At one point, after a minute or three of a silence that was bordering on awkward, Fabrizio noticed how Ermal swallowed a little nervously, but he assumed it was just because he still felt weird after, well, after accusing him of planning a murder. Fabrizio didn't realize how his face still presented an expression way more annoyed than he felt, because now he was here; he may have been looking forward to this a little, had been curious, and now, with seeing Ermal in bright daylight, he had to admit that the man looked rather... nice.

They didn't know each other well enough for Fabrizio to notice how Ermal's face got a tiny bit paler the longer Fabri didn't say anything, just stared at him with a look on his face that might seem a lot more intimidating than it actually was intended to be.

Before Fabrizio could get his mind to work properly and form a sentence, construct a question to ask anything of this man that seemed a lot less scary in daylight, they were interrupted by a waitress, asking if they were ready to order.

Fabrizio asked for a coffee, Ermal echoing him with a soft voice. His hands were still on the salt shaker, making it spin. Suddenly, the waitress’ hand shot out and grabbed the shaker and put it on the table next to them with a loud clang.

“Other people still want to use that, you know.”

Then she turned and walked back to the counter, Fabrizio staring at her retreating back. He missed how Ermal seemed to freeze for a second, before he sat back in his chair, arms folded in front of his chest like a shield.

Fabrizio then turned back, with a chuckle, and a comment on rude staff. Finally, he managed to continue with a question, and while there were a lot of things he was wondering about, he started with something basic.

“So, Ermal, what do you do in life?”

The answer took some time coming, and while he had lifted his head when he heard his name, he did not meet Fabrizio’s eyes. He really seemed very different than the man of that strange night when they first met, and it intrigued Fabrizio. Were there any other hidden aspects of his personality to discover?

"I work in a restaurant", Ermal said, trying to smile as if it was important to come off as likeable here. Not that much would be needed for that, Fabrizio had to admit that he found the other man rather charming - as long as he wasn't sitting on top of him, or well, not like... Fabrizio was fighting hard to not let his mind get _there_ , and the idea that he might give of the impression to Ermal that he wouldn't care about his words didn't come to his mind. For Fabri felt like he rather was _too_  interested in Ermal here.

"And I play a little music," Ermal then said, as if it was an afterthought that he didn't really expect an answer to. But it was that sentence that snatched Fabrizio's full concentration back to their conversation.

"Oh wow, really?", and when he heard the curiosity in Fabrizio's voice, there was a gentle smile appearing on Ermal's face. And wasn't that a lovely look?

"Yeah, me and some friends, we're trying it as a band."

"That's awesome; do you play any instruments?"

"Yeah, guitar, and a little piano", and then Ermal looked down, not quite meeting Fabrizio's eyes when he added: "and I sing."

And Fabrizio was just about to ask more, to tell him how he'd like to hear him sing some time, to mention his own music, but he got interrupted. Because their coffee arrived, brought by another waitress than the one who had taken their orders earlier, and this one smiled brightly at both of them.

Both men smiled back at her, both men had enough experience working with bad-tempered clients that they would not ignore her. It did mean, though, that they had rather lost their conversation.

“You sing?” Fabrizio asked encouragingly, after a brief silence.

“Yes. No. I mean, it’s not that special. What about you, what do you do?” It sounded a bit rushed, as if Ermal wanted nothing more than to focus the attention on something else than him.

“I work in a bar downtown. Of course, the hours are sometimes hard to combine with the children, but I’m making it work.”

“You mentioned you have a son and a daughter.”

Fabrizio smiled at that, he hadn’t expected Ermal to remember that, why would he, and the circumstances he’d told it in were far from optimal.

“Yes, Libero and Anita. They are amazing, I’m so lucky they’re in my life, I love them so -”

Once more, their conversation was interrupted, this time not by someone taking an order, or bringing an order, no. They were startled by the sudden crash of glasses and cups hitting the floor. Out of reflex, Fabrizio looked up, trying to find the source of all the noise, but he didn’t make it that far. Because as his gaze fell on Ermal, it stayed there. And what he saw, worried him.

Ermal seemed to be paler than just a minute ago, dark curls an even greater contrast against his light skin, and he seemed to have curled in on himself. Fabrizio looked on, as now a customer started shouting at the waitress for dropping the tray, and Ermal positively _flinched_.

Ermal tried to get his breathing that had picked up speed back under control, but he noticed that it wasn't working too well. He briefly closed his eyes, but then realized that this was a bad idea, there were images lurking in the dark behind his eyelids that he'd rather avoid, and when he opened them again, he tried to take in as much of his surroundings as possible. He was in a cafe, in Rome, in Italy, this was safe, nothing could happen, it was all... - It was not working, because that man still was screaming at the waitress who had dropped an order, and the words he said weren't familiar but the tone they were snarled in, and Ermal wished he could cover his ears with his hands, but then his gaze fell back on the man across from him. Fabrizio. Who looked at him a little worried.

But there was no need to worry. Ermal needed no worry. So he faked a smile, he had always been good at that, and while he could feel how shaky it was, he hoped it would not be obvious to Fabrizio. He did not know Ermal, he did not care about him, he would not look for anything that might be wrong. If they could just continue the conversation, he could focus on something else, and also he still needed to establish that trustworthiness.

And Fabrizio actually did exactly that, continue the conversation, talked about nothing in particular, filled the silence, distracted Ermal from what happened just now. Fabrizio could see that it helped, a little at least, though Ermal still didn’t seem completely at ease. He didn’t know what he could do, if there was anything he could do at all. Any of his friends he would have hugged, comforting them, showing them they were not alone, but he couldn’t do that, not now. He and Ermal weren’t friends, no matter how much he’d like that, they were not, they know hardly anything about each other. Besides, Fabrizio had a hunch that maybe suddenly hugging Ermal, virtual strangers as they were, would not be such a good idea.

He needed to do something, though, he felt so _powerless._ So the next time the same waitress walked by, the smiling one, who was a bit less smiley now after what happened with the tray and the other customers, but who had to complete her shift anyway, Fabrizio offered her a kind comment, hoping that she too would feel a little better. Then he ordered two hot chocolates and some mini chocolate chip cookies. It wasn’t the famous Mobrici hot chocolate, but it was all he could offer Ermal right now.

Ermal took one of the cookies, a little hesitant, and then he didn't eat it, but looked at it, as if this tiny baked thing would offer answers to all the questions he had never asked himself, and he held it in a tight grip, so finally, it crumbled. He stared at what was left of the cookie, and Fabrizio, who had watched all of this happen, got even more worried.

The man he was facing looked terrible. Not in standards of beauty, there he probably could never look terrible, but he did in all the ways that mattered right now. Ermal was pale like the snow next to the road on a wet and warm February afternoon, and his eyes, those eyes that had sparks of fire in them when he thought he had to fight for his life, and that had contained such warmth when he had told about his band earlier, they just looked _empty_  now. As empty as his last smile had. And Fabrizio didn't know what exactly was wrong there, but the knowledge that something was, it hurt his heart. The knowledge that something could get this man so down, this Ermal, whose cheeks got decorated by the hint of a blush when he talked about his music and who had immediately worried about Fabrizio's children when he had mentioned them rather than on what he had assumed to be his own murder, who seemed like such a kind human being on a second (or maybe third) look, it wasn't a nice thought.

“We can do this another day, if you’d prefer to go home,” Fabrizio finally said, offering a way out, though he didn’t think it would be such a great idea for Ermal to be on his own right now, there was nothing he could do. They didn’t know each other, and Ermal had spent weeks being scared of him, so there was no way _he_ would be able to comfort him.

Still, this way out didn’t seem very appreciated, if Ermal’s body language was anything to go by. His expression turned from completely empty to slightly sad, and his shoulders dropped just a little bit further down.

Because that suggestion indeed wasn’t very appreciated. Ermal had been looking forward to this meeting, he had been looking forward to this second chance to make a good impression. That was all he wanted, to show he was in fact a functioning, normal human being, who could be trusted, who could keep a conversation going, who could be nice and kind. But so far, everything had gone wrong, and he was sitting there, flinching, slightly panicked, and if anything else went wrong _crying_. That was not the impression he wanted to make, not at all.

And now here Fabrizio was, suggesting they could meet some other time, and it sounded well-meant, but Ermal knew that it was not a suggestion for another meeting at all. He knew that it was just a tactic to let this end easily, without hurt feelings on either side, and that there would never be another time to meet. At least not like this, maybe they’d see each other on the bus late at night, both noticing the other but pretending not to, pretending they were no more than strangers.

And all that just when Ermal had started to play with the thought that maybe, just maybe, it might be nice to be something else with Fabrizio, something that wasn't strangers. Maybe even something like friends. But he was aware that this wouldn't happen now. And Ermal refused to look into Fabrizio's dark eyes, scared of what he might find there - disapproval or mindless pity, he couldn't have said what would be worse. And thereby, he missed spotting the compassion in Fabrizio's gaze, the look that seemed to whisper " _I think I know how you feel, at least a little, and I want to help you_ ".

Ermal extended his hand, to pick up another cookie, and maybe actually eat it that time. But this was the moment in which one of the waiters stepped through the door that connected the cafe with the kitchen, the flow of air picked up and the front door fell closed with a _bang_. Ermal flinched, once again, and thereby, his outstretched hand collided with the mug that Fabrizio had ordered him earlier. Hot chocolate spilled on his pants, and as it might have been not that hot anymore, it already had been standing there a few minutes, it wasn't so much pain but rather embarrassment that caused a tear to slip out of Ermal's eye. And he was aware that it wouldn't be the only one, not with how on edge he already had been and with how much of an overall failure he felt in that moment, and still, he couldn't bear to look at Fabrizio.

Ermal tried to hide the tears that were now falling from his eyes, shaking his curls forward to obscure his eyes. All he wanted was to go home, be home, alone, and lock himself in his bedroom and collapse between the blankets. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t run out, crying, into the busy streets, with chocolate milk all over his trousers. What he could do, was a good second thing. He got up, and stumbled towards the bathrooms, trying not to trip over anything. Luckily they weren’t so far away, and he made it there, finding them empty, and he could finally hide. He knew it would make things difficult, awkward, later on, but for now it was the only thing he could do to get away from this man, his questions that would surely follow, those eyes that kept roaming over him, that were surely  _judging_ him, and the inevitable conclusion that he was a waste of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, please share your thoughts in a comment ❤


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ermal had made it to the cafe's bathroom, away from everything. What will happen next? Is Fabrizio going to follow him? See if he can do anything? Is there anything he can do at all?

Fabrizio just watched Ermal go, leave the table without any words, any look, any explanation. He didn’t know this man, they hadn’t gotten very far in the getting to know each other part yet, but still, he somehow felt protective of Ermal. Only, he didn’t know how to protect him, or what to protect him from. So he just did what little he could. He asked the waitress to clean up the mess please, asked if he could pay and did so, and then made his way over to the bathrooms, looking for Ermal.

Ermal was standing there in front of the mirrors, trying to clean his trousers, but slightly failing, and he was still trying not to cry, and also slightly failing at that.

"Ermal?", Fabrizio asked, as gently as he could, and the thought that this was a rather unusual name flashed through his mind. It also sounded very pretty, and Fabri had no idea where it might come from, and he might have been curious; might have wanted to ask Ermal so many things, but now was not the time for that. Now he should just try to offer some comfort, and even that was difficult enough.

The man in question looked up, met Fabrizio's eyes in the mirror for a split second and then cast his gaze back down. 

"You can go, you know, it's alright", Ermal whispered, his voice sounding so... defeated somehow, so  _ fragile _ , and so very much like he expected Fabrizio to actually listen to him. To go, just leave him on his own, abandon him to stay alone in a cold bathroom with nothing but his tears and his fears. As if that would be the normal thing to do, what was expected. 

Fabrizio was looking at Ermal's back, his hunched shoulders, how tight his hands were gripping the sink - as if he knew he would be unable to stop them from shaking if he let go, and Fabrizio felt a little like crying too at seeing all of this.  Of course he wasn’t going to leave, of course it was not  _ alright _ . He would stay, give Ermal some space, but  _ stay _ . 

“No, no, no, I’m not going, at least not until you feel better,” he told Ermal softly, while wondering what he could do, how he could help. He felt so powerless, he wanted to  _ do _ something. But what? His first instinct was to touch, to hug, to offer comfort that way. He had never been good with words, not in situations like this, and preferred to rely on offering a shelter instead. But Fabrizio remembered exactly how Ermal had reacted to the loud, unexpected noises, the shouting, and he realized that maybe going up to him and pulling him into a hug, unexpectedly, and them being virtually strangers still, might not be a good idea. So what options were left?

One thing he could do was glare,  _ glare _ at the man opening the bathroom door, trying to come in. No. Ermal needed a moment, and he was going to have that moment in peace, Fabrizio would make sure of that. Ermal was still wiping a bit unsuccessfully at the spot on his pants. Fabrizio didn’t think he had noticed the man at all, so there he had succeeded. 

“But I feel fine,” Ermal said, his voice somehow steady suddenly, and it didn’t match his expression, the situation, or his body language, not at all. It broke Fabrizio’s heart a little more, because he rather recognized it, this was the voice of someone who was used to telling people exactly what they wanted to hear, what they needed to hear to not ask any questions, to not pay any extra attention, to not linger. It broke his heart, because he knew how much that voice hid the need for comfort, and how much it masked the loneliness inside.

Fabrizio carefully took a tiny step closer to Ermal, and thought about what he could say to show him that he wasn't alone here. And that there was no need to hide behind fake smiles and  _ I'm fine's _ when it was crystal clear that Ermal was feeling like anything but smiling right now, that he was nothing even close to fine.

When he heard Fabrizio move in his direction, Ermal turned around, facing the other man, and he didn't try to get further away, didn't seem to be scared, which Fabrizio saw as a good sign. While he tried not to think too much about the surprise that had flickered in Ermal's eyes, the surprise about him still being there.

"Ermal, listen. You don't have to tell me  _ what _ is wrong, it's none of my business. But please, I want you to know that there's no reason to pretend with me. I can tell you're not fine, and if there's anything I can do to help you, please, know that I'd do it."

Ermal didn't say anything, he just fixed Fabrizio with his dark eyes. And Fabri continued, though he still was unsure if what he was saying were the right things - it seemed better to try than to be silent and let Ermal's brain fill in the blanks. Fabrizio had enough experience with that himself, and it usually didn't end well.

"See, usually I'd offer you a hug, but we aren't friends-", Fabrizio started, and then was quick to stop his words again.

Because Ermal's face had shattered here; not even with the experience he seemed to have in disguising his feelings had he been able to hide a short expression of devastation at those words. And Fabrizio cursed himself, because this was not going as he wanted, not at all. He hadn't meant it like that, rather the opposite.

"No no no, I meant that as, we don't really know each other, so I don't know if that would be okay, if I'd be allowed to hug you.” 

_ But I think I'd like to be your friend _ , Fabrizio didn't add, but nevertheless he knew that it was true. 

"You're worried because you aren't sure if it would be okay to hug me?", Ermal asked, his voice not totally steady. He was in need for clarification, was not sure if he got this right.

Fabrizio nodded, and tears welled up in Ermal's eyes again. He couldn't help it; this little thoughtfulness was a little too much for his heart in that moment.

For Fabrizio, it was too much too, Ermal's honest surprise, his new tears; and as he was pretty sure it would be alright now, Fabrizio finally gave in to this instinct, to his heart screaming at him to just wrap this man up in his arms and pull him close and protect him from the world. He didn't know all the problems Ermal faced, and he had no clue if he could help with them, if he should help, if Ermal  _ wanted _ or  _ needed _ his help.

But Fabrizio wanted to help, and in this moment, he could. So he hugged Ermal, and they stood there, slightly rocking back and forth, until finally, Ermal seemed to calm down and come back to himself a bit.

That’s when Fabrizio slowly unraveled the hug, slowly put some distance between them. Not because he necessarily wanted to, but he knew that at some point he had to, when the excuse of comforting Ermal ran out. Definitely not because he wanted to, because Fabrizio had found that these arms were a surprisingly nice place to be in. For his thin frame and fragile emotional state right now, Ermal’s hug was unexpectedly strong, and Fabrizio couldn’t help but notice that they fit together rather nicely.

The distance did give him the chance to look at Ermal’s face, where he saw a soft, grateful smile and some stray tears on his cheeks. Fabrizio wished he could wipe them away, but surely that would be too much.

“Are you feeling a bit better?” Fabrizio asked instead, getting a nod in return, a nod that was so much more sincere than the statement he had made earlier. 

“Okay, let’s go then,”  Fabrizio said, and turned towards the door to leave. He paused, though, when he noticed Ermal hadn’t moved to follow him.

“Where?” his voice came from behind him.

That stopped Fabrizio. Because how did he explain that he assumed they would stay together for a bit longer, and in another place than this cafe’s bathroom? How did he explain that he would love it if Ermal came home with him? How did he explain that he did not want Ermal to be alone right now, not after  _ this _ ? Fabrizio had seen enough to know that that was probably not the best idea right now, no matter how much Ermal would insist it would be fine, that he would be fine.

But how to explain all that without being too forward, without asking too much, without giving Ermal the wrong impressions (again)? Briefly, Fabrizio wondered how much it would take for Ermal to go back to those first assumptions, how much it would take for him to think again that Fabrizio was trying to get him alone and without witnesses…

He was brought back to the present by a repetition of that question, “Where are we going?”, but before he could answer they were interrupted again by the door swinging open. A little boy peeked in, and at that Ermal moved past Fabrizio to leave the bathroom. When passing him, he reached out to grab not quite Fabrizio’s hand, but his sleeve instead. 

They had made it almost to the door of the cafe, when it opened in their faces, and a man with a blond ponytail walked in, immersed in his phone, not minding his surroundings. As he stepped in, he bumped into Ermal, causing him to stumble on his feet. Still, the man glared at Ermal, like everything bad happening in the world was his fault alone. He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could do so, Fabrizio stepped in. He’d had enough.

“If you  _ dare _ to say one word to my friend, then I’m going to make sure that you never forget to look where you’re going again,” he positively hissed, and continued, calmer but so much scarier, “Do you understand me or do I have to make myself a bit clearer?”

As he spoke, Fabrizio moved himself between the man and Ermal, shielding him. The man turned two shades paler and quickly moved on with an apologetic gesture, not saying a word. Fabrizio watched him go, satisfied, and then turned to look at Ermal with a much softer expression on his face. He was met with two wide eyes, staring at him. 

Fabrizio faltered for a second, had he messed it up now? Scared Ermal, even though his threat was never directed at him? Scared him,  _ again _ ? He watched, worried, but then Ermal spoke.

“You… Wow… Thank you, that was… Really… Wow.” 

Fabrizio had no idea how to respond to that, so he didn't, just led them outside of the cafe, crossing the street. Earlier, the crowds of people trying to get their coffee had forced Ermal to let go of Fabrizio's sleeve, and Fabrizio found that he missed that little contact. So he lightly touched Ermal's shoulder while they were walking, and he wasn't completely sure if he could, still worried he might overstep a boundary here, but it wasn't met with any resistance; there even seemed to be the hint of a smile playing around Ermal's lips. Fabrizio wanted to make sure Ermal felt that he wasn't alone, and he rather liked it himself too, to know that Ermal was still around. How he even seemed to walk a tiny bit closer to him, as if they really were friends already.

They crossed another street, walked around a few corners, and Fabrizio had expected Ermal to ask again where they were going, but he didn't. And Fabrizio was unsure how he could have explained it, this wish, nearly a need, to keep Ermal around a little longer. How he wanted them to spend a little more time together, just like he felt it to be the right thing to always keep a light touch on Ermal. It nearly was as if they were gravitating towards each other. Fabrizio didn't really understand it, but once they reached the door of his apartment building, he became aware of just how very much he wished Ermal to join him to his flat.

Fabrizio stopped in his tracks and turned to look at Ermal, who had been quiet during the last few minutes. But at least he didn't look all too pale anymore, and his eyes had a little sparkle back, he noticed, and both things came as a great relief to Fabrizio. After a moment of silence in which he thought about how he really had to ask now, how there was no point in waiting any longer, Fabrizio nervously shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and shot Ermal a cautious smile.

"Um, so, I understand if you'd rather go home, but you're very welcome to stay with me for a bit," Fabrizio said, fumbling his keys out of his pockets, not very sure about anything right now.

Ermal looked at the man in front of him, tried to make out the expression in his eyes. There was something honest in those eyes, in his words, and Ermal knew that he had a choice here. It had been a genuine offer that he could stay, and he could say no, Fabrizio surely wouldn't be angry if he did (and wouldn't murder him, at least of that Ermal was convinced by now), but the thing was, Ermal didn't  _ want _ to say no. The way Fabrizio had defended him against that blond man at the cafe, how he had hugged him earlier... There was something so protective in these gestures, and for once, Ermal thought he might like to be the one getting protected. Especially if it was by someone with eyes that kind.

"I think I'd like to stay for a bit", Ermal offered with a little smile of his own.

At that, Fabrizio nodded, and opened the door. He was more relieved than he wanted to admit, either out loud or to himself. He did not know why he felt this way, this strongly, because after all, he didn’t know Ermal, not really. A meeting at night and a meeting in a cafe, and neither had been very typical, or informative. And with everything that had happened, they hadn’t actually talked much. So he just had this unexplainable, unexpected protective feeling, besides the strong feeling of “I want to get to know you better” that he’d even had at the ending of that first night. But they were here now, at his apartment, where Ermal had agreed to be, so it seemed he finally had the chance to get to know more about this man.

Fabrizio let them both into his flat, threw his keys on the small table in the hallway, and then led the way to the kitchen.

“Would you like something to drink? Water? Coffee? Something stronger?”

The answer took a little time coming, but Fabrizio gave Ermal the time he needed, tidying some things on the counter that did not need any tidying. It kept his hands busy, though.

“Maybe… Another hot chocolate, if that’s possible?” Ermal finally asked, hesitantly, and Fabrizio froze for a second with the roll of kitchen paper that he had been fumbling with still in his hand. Because there was just something about the way Ermal had said that, something about his tone of voice. Fabrizio couldn’t put his finger on it, not quite, he just knew that it increased his emotions towards Ermal even more. He looked at him, having put down the kitchen paper, but otherwise still frozen, caught up in his emotions, that were suddenly so strong, stronger than before.

“Never mind, tea is fine, I’ll have tea, please,” Ermal said quickly, with a slight shake of his head as if he was telling himself off for even asking for the chocolate in the first place. It shook Fabrizio from his trance, though.

“No! It’s fine! One hot chocolate coming!” Fabrizio said quickly, adding, “Or two, actually, I’d like one too,” because he realized that it would not make Ermal feel any better about asking for it if he then took tea or, even worse, water himself. And he actually felt like hot chocolate too, it had been a roller coaster day, even for him, so he could scarcely imagine what it was like for Ermal.

Ermal had taken a seat at the table, while Fabrizio was busy with the chocolate. Here was his chance cheer up Ermal with a Mobrici hot chocolate, the famous but very secret family recipe. He focused on the little steps, selecting the nicest mug for Ermal, adding some extra marshmallows, and rummaged through the cupboard to find some cookies too. He placed the steaming mug in front of Ermal, and received a little but so sincere smile that he’d love to see more often. That smile also made him wonder when the last time had been that Ermal had sat like this, in someone else’s kitchen, with a hot chocolate made especially for him. It might have been a while, and Fabrizio just knew that Ermal didn’t deserve that. He deserved hot chocolate every day, if he wanted it.

Quickly, Fabrizio filled up another mug, now for himself, and joined Ermal at the table. He chose not to sit opposite him, it would feel too much like some kind of interrogation, so he took the chair at the head of the table, sitting at an angle next to Ermal. They sipped their chocolate for a while in silence, a comfortable silence, because what do you say after all this? Should they bring up what happened in the cafe?

Fabrizio wanted to, to ask questions, to understand exactly why and how to prevent it, and how to make it better. But he also didn’t want to, because he knew that still he had no right to any of those answers, those stories, those reasons. They were Ermal’s, and he had no right to hear any of them, not if he made Ermal another fifty cups of hot chocolate.

Ermal wanted to, to explain himself, to talk about why he had reacted the way he had, because Fabrizio felt so safe and like he would listen, really listen, not just brush it off or only be interested in the details. But he also didn’t want to, because he didn’t want to seem weak (or, weaker than he already had), he didn’t want to seem needy, he didn’t want to seem helpless. He wasn’t. He could do this on his own. He was good at doing things on his own.

Ermal finished his chocolate and kept his hands around the mug that still held some warmth, holding on to it, as if the warm feeling in his fingers could fight the embarrassment, the  _ fear _ that had seemed to suck all the warmth out of his body earlier. He was staring into the depths of the now empty mug, thinking about how surprisingly nice it felt to sit here, the silence interrupted by nothing but Fabrizio's calm breath, and finally, Ermal looked up. He risked a tiny glance at Fabrizio, who noticed that, and smiled at him. Such an easy smile, so honest, and somehow, it was contagious. 

Fabrizio noticed how Ermal's eyes started to light up once he smiled,  _ truly _ smiled, how it seemed to spread over his whole face, and he caught himself thinking once again that Ermal should smile more often. (That he would like to make him smile more often.) And that he'd love it if Ermal stayed another little while. 

"Would you maybe also like to eat something?", Fabrizio asked, not solely for the purpose of having an excuse to keep Ermal around, no, he also was a little worried since Ermal hadn't even eaten the cookies earlier, and he knew from his own experience how very draining emotional exhaustion could be. So a little home made food might help. 

Ermal nodded, a bit hesitantly, and Fabrizio got up to prepare something quick, all the while wondering if Ermal was worried he was asking too much. It seemed so sad, somehow, that here this man was, who admittedly had accused him of murder, which was rather a bad way to go about making friends, but surely he  _ had _ friends, a family, people who loved him, and yet did not expect these kindnesses. What had his experiences been like, that he didn't seem to think he deserved this?

Of course, Fabrizio didn't say any of this, didn't ask all this. Instead, he kept a steady stream of lighthearted chatter going, talking about himself, about his children, about his hobbies and what he did in life. He tried to get their interaction back to some lightheartedness and casualty (well, back to? It had hardly been lighthearted or casual at all so far). And it seemed to work, with every glance he shot at Ermal, the man seemed a bit more comfortable, at ease, relaxed. Good. Fabrizio smiled a soft smile towards the kitchen counter, his back towards Ermal. 

Fabrizio had just finished talking about his son's latest football match when he wanted to start chopping some tomatoes, and out of pure habit, he started to roll up his sleeves for that. And then stopped, quickly put it back down to cover his right wrist. He hoped that Ermal hadn't noticed this weird behavior, or the pause in the talking, and was quick to tell how Anita had drawn a poster with her brother's name and something that vaguely resembled a football on it to cheer for him. Judged by Ermal's delighted laugh at that, he didn't seem to have caught on to the danger to all the easy conversation they had achieved that had been there just a minute ago. And that was a good thing, Ermal had been through enough today. 

A few minutes later, Fabrizio placed a plate of pasta with tomatoes and mozzarella in front of Ermal and smiled when the younger man shortly after told him that he liked the food. He was glad about that, that Ermal liked his food, and he hoped the same might be said about his company. For he surely enjoyed Ermal's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts on the chapter! Your comments are so very much appreciated!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fabrizio and Ermal have dinner, and for better or worse, the evening continues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, good news, last weekend, we met up to really plan this fic, and we've got stuff planned for a good number of future chapters, and we now actually know where we're taking this :D We're looking forward to writing it and making it exist not just in our heads, and we hope you will like it!

During dinner, they continued to talk, slowly emptying their plates. They talked about music, songs that they liked, discovering they had quite a lot in common there; they talked about their work, about places in the city. At some point, Fabrizio decided to ask that what he had been wondering about since that first meeting.

“Ermal, I hope this doesn’t come off as insensitive or anything, I’m just really curious - your name, I’ve never heard it before. And I mean, it’s nice, really nice, but I wondered where it might come from?”

At that, Ermal had to smile again, Fabrizio nearly stumbling over his words while asking this was rather endearing. He couldn’t remember anyone who’d been as worried about how the question might sound, and he’d had heard this question in a lot of variations throughout his life. 

“It’s Albanian,” he explained, “You know, I’m from Albania originally.”

“Wow, really, are you?”

Out of reflex, Ermal looked for any signs that this information might change anything. He didn’t think it would, not with Fabrizio, but he couldn’t help it. He’d heard everything before, and he’d learned from the experiences. Fabrizio, though, only looked at him with an open gaze, clearly hoping for just a little more information, just because he was curious. Interested. All in a good way. 

“Yeah, we moved here when I was thirteen,” Ermal continued.

“That’s such a big step, I can’t imagine it! Did your father get a job here? Or, why did your parents - ” Fabrizio started, but then stopped. Stopped, because there was something in Ermal’s eyes, which were so open just a moment before, that had shuttered closed. In just a split second, Ermal had turned from relaxed and open to guarded and controlled. It told Fabrizio that here was one of those stories that belonged only to Ermal.

“I mean, that must have been quite a change for you,” he hastened to say, to make amends for that topic he shouldn’t have touched. Fabrizio hoped he hadn’t ruined it all, that bond that had slowly started to grow between them. But it was so hard to keep it going, to keep the conversation going, when he had no idea what he should be keeping clear of.

Ermal only looked at Fabrizio, a distant expression in his eyes - as if he was lost in thoughts, as if his mind was miles and years away from Fabri's cosy little flat somewhere in Rome.

"It was quite a change...", Ermal started, his voice flat, but he didn't finish that thought, at least not out loud. 

In the silence that followed, Fabrizio tried to scramble through his mind for anything that would take this conversation back to more comfortable territories, but his mind came up awfully blank. And he wished that they hadn't lost it already, this spark of connectedness that had been there during their talking earlier. Hoped that at some point, they could go back to speaking about their favourite songs like old friends. 

The silence stretched on, but it wasn't entirely  _ uncomfortable _ . It was heavy, yes, but more with possibility than with awkwardness. Fabrizio had picked up a pencil laying on the table, playing with it with his left hand, just to be occupied with something while he waited for whichever turn this might take. This conversation, as well as this... relationship? The word felt a little too big, but then again, it didn't have to - they were two people who kinda knew each other, giving them an interpersonal relationship. That was all there was. And Fabrizio appreciated what they had. So he waited for Ermal to be ready, either to say more or to tell him that he wouldn't do that. And of course both of those opinions would be okay for Fabrizio. 

Finally, after what might have been five minutes or an hour, Ermal took a deep breath and started to talk. 

"Okay, listen. I came here to Italy with my mom and my siblings, they're a bit younger than me. And we-", Ermal stopped, and Fabrizio swallowed. 

"You don't have to tell me, you know, it's okay if you don't want to-", he whispered, but Ermal shook his head. 

"Is it weird when I say that I feel like it would be a good thing to tell you?" 

"No, no it's not, my friend, I'm honored if you feel like you can share this with me", Fabrizio said, noticing how Ermal tilted his head a little to the side when he said  _ friend _ .

And so Ermal continued. 

"My father, he.. He wasn't a good person, not at all.  He…” Ermal stopped again, swallowing heavily, and then tried to find the words to continue. Fabrizio was watching him, not sure if he should let him continue or let it be, this wasn’t going to be anything good, and he wasn’t sure how much he could bear to hear. But then, Ermal was the one who had lived it, and made it through, so surely, if he could bear to tell it, the least Fabrizio could do was listen, right? 

“He hit us.” It came out in no more than a whisper, but it still was powerful in some way, and Fabrizio could sense the strength behind the words, the unapologetic way Ermal laid out this fact.

“So, eventually, we left Albania. And came here. Without him. It wasn’t easy, growing up here, especially in the beginning. But it was better, so much better.”

Fabrizio could hear the emotion in Ermal’s voice, could almost hear all the things he didn’t say. What he did say, though, it explained his behaviour in the cafe, with the noise, the shouting, how he had reacted. Fabrizio felt some of the pieces of the puzzle fall into in place, and some of the pieces of his heart fall apart. Ermal didn’t deserve this,  _ no one _ did. He thought of his own children, how small they were, how dependent on him. He imagined Ermal as a child, as a small boy, all long limbs and curls and big dark eyes… He couldn’t fathom how anyone could do anything like this, but he imagined it, and it  _ hurt _ .

It hurt so bad, and Fabrizio took a deep breath. Looked at Ermal, who was facing him - not an emotion visible in his face, not even blinking. As if he was waiting for Fabrizio's reaction to what he had just revealed. And Fabri wanted to say so many things, but he wasn't sure  _ how _ , so he settled on a few simple facts.

"I'm so incredibly sorry to hear that this happened to you. And I'm, if you allow me to say this, I'm proud of you. For getting through all of this."

Ermal continued to look at Fabrizio, and Fabri thought about how many stories those dark eyes might have to tell. How many terrible things they had been forced to watched, and, hopefully, how many wonders they had seen as well. Fabrizio liked this saying, that through a person's eyes you could catch a glimpse at their soul, and when he looked into Ermal's, he was captivated. And maybe also a little bewitched.

And then, Ermal moved around in his seat a little, the chair's legs causing a low scratching noise at the wooden kitchen floor. With his movements, he ended up a few centimeters closer to Fabrizio, and the older man had to think of his son. How Libero sometimes came home from school with his head hanging a little low, his eyes missing their usual sparkle, after having gotten a bad grade or losing an important match of football. And he wouldn't say something at first, but he usually sat a little closer to Fabrizio on the sofa, gravitating towards his dad, and then they understood each other without words. Fabrizio would lay an arm around Libero, hold him close, offer some comfort, an unspoken "I'm there for you, no matter what". And Libero usually wasn't the biggest fan of cuddling, but in those situations, he would rest his head at Fabri's shoulder, snuggle a little closer, and after a while, relax again. Sitting closer to each other than they normally would always led to Libero feeling better, and with that, Fabrizio as well, as it pained him to see his son feeling not good.

And now, here was Ermal; interesting, handsome, scared and oh so brave Ermal, and he had inched a little closer to him.  Fabrizio wondered briefly, very briefly if maybe Ermal was like Libero here, but then stopped wondering and just gave in to his instincts. How could he not, with those thoughts in his head, combined with those about his children before? He slowly lifted his arm, he would give Ermal time to adjust, react, move away, of course he would, but especially now. But Ermal didn’t move away, if anything, he seemed to leaning just a tiny bit more, anticipating the touch.

Fabrizio put his arm around Ermal’s shoulders, fingers rubbing his arm in a way that he hoped was comforting, Because that’s all he wanted to do, comfort Ermal, make sure he felt safe and in a good place, and appreciated. Make sure he felt  _ loved _ . Maybe the depth of his feelings should scare him, but somehow it felt like it should be. And it wasn’t that he wanted Ermal to feel loved by  _ him _ , it wasn’t like that, he wanted Ermal to feel loved in general. He wanted Ermal to feel like he mattered. That he was important. That he was worth everything.

And it seemed as if he made a correct decision, had read the situation right, because beneath his arm, he could feel Ermal relax, leaning in to the touch, resting his head on Fabrizio’s shoulder. They stayed like that for a minute, and Fabrizio wondered if Ermal, like Libero usually would, now would feel secure enough to talk about the thoughts occupying him, to say more, even though he had already told so much.

It turned out that Fabrizio was right: Ermal relaxed in his embrace more and more, and he continued to talk after a few minutes.

"I'm alright, most of the time, but there are certain moments.. when it isn't that easy. Sometimes, I still dream about him", Ermal whispered, and Fabrizio closed his eyes; focused on nothing but the sound of the other man's voice, his breathing, the mindless patterns he was drawing onto his arm. To think about what Ermal told him, that was something to be done alone, where no one could witness the emotions this caused in Fabrizio, except for a bottle of wine or two that might keep him company. 

"It gets worse when there's too much stress, you know, when I can't sleep that well... I guess I've been a little on edge the whole week. That might also explain the circumstances of our first meeting", and Ermal laughed, but it sounded a bit hollow. 

When he continued, his voice was very quiet; if they hadn't been sitting that close to each other, Fabrizio wouldn't have been able to understand him. 

"I'm not really a fan of situations where I can't anticipate what other people might do. Or of loud noises, or people screaming at each other", Ermal admitted, and Fabrizio held him a little tighter. 

"I can understand that, Ermal, I can," he whispered back, because he could. 

The circumstances were different, of course they were, he hadn't had to suffer through the things that Ermal had to endure, but still, Fabrizio could think back and remember enough anxiety attacks to get a clear idea of how Ermal might have felt. And he had to admit, if he had been in such an emotional state, and then would have felt followed around by some stranger late at night, who then also tried to get his attention and stop him in an abandoned dark street, with a hand in his pocket and an unknown object inside, he, too, would probably have jumped to the worst conclusions possible. In the light of the revelations of this day, Ermal's accusations seemed slightly less absurd.

"Listen, Ermal, you shouldn't feel bad about that, our first meeting, it's all forgiven and forgotten. And also, please don't worry about earlier, you absolutely did nothing wrong there. It's all good now. Yes?"

Fabrizio felt Ermal's nod at his shoulder rather than he saw it, and still, it made him smile.  There was a second of silence, and Fabrizio wondered what was going through Ermal’s mind now, and if there was anything he could do to reassure him further, to make him a bit more comfortable after the day he’d had. Maybe the best course would be to turn away from all these heavy subjects, and instead turn to something lighter, much lighter, to change the mood. Hang out like friends would, on just a normal evening at the end of a normal day.

“Do you like football?” he asked, after a bit.

“What?” came the reply, it seemed that had absolutely not been what Ermal had expected to be asked.

“Football. I just thought, there’s a game starting soon, and maybe you’d like to watch it together? It’s okay if not, we can do something else instead, or if you’d rather go, I could walk you home?” Fabrizio explained, and Ermal stared at him. How was this man so incredibly thoughtful, so considerate? Before, he had wondered if this  _ kindness _ might come at a price, if he expected something in return, but the more Fabrizio talked, the more he offered, the more Ermal got the feeling that this was just the way he was, that he meant it, that he could be  _ trusted _ . A first flicker of that trust had made him open up earlier, had allowed him to bury himself in Fabrizio’s arms without fear, and that trust now only was growing.

“Football does sound nice,” he replied, finally, and Fabrizio nodded, smiling.

“Why don’t you go to the living room? I’ll get us something to drink and some snacks.”

Fabrizio rummaged through the cabinets, looking for those things he promised, and when Ermal had left the room, he sent a quick text to his friends. Ermal didn’t need to know Fabrizio had been planning to see the match with his friends in their usual bar, no doubt he would insist Fabrizio didn’t change his plans because of him. And Fabrizio knew Ermal would not feel comfortable in a crowded bar right now, surrounded by people he did not know, and he also didn’t want to end their day here, somehow it was too heavy still. It would be hard to move on from all these emotional revelations, and Fabrizio wanted to see Ermal again, be his friend. If they parted now, it would be awkward to move to an easier relationship. He slid his phone back in his pocket again, on silent mode now, he didn’t wait for an answer. His friends would understand, even if he just sent a vague message about spending the evening at home in peace. 

Then he made his way to the living room, with some chips and soft drinks, no need to add alcohol to the heavy mix of the day. Ermal was already on the couch, occupying a self-consciously small corner, flicking through the channels on the TV until he found the right one showing the match. He looked up with a smile when Fabrizio sat down next to him.

He placed the bowl of chips in between them, handed Ermal a Fanta, and then the game started. Roma wasn't doing too well from right the beginning, unconcentrated passes and weak attempts at the goal that could have been so much more, and Fabrizio quickly got annoyed with his team. And then, around half an hour into the match, there was a red card, one that in Fabri's eyes shouldn't even have been yellow, and of course he wasn't too happy with that. But while during a usual match, be it at home alone or at the bar with his friends, Fabrizio would have started shouting quite some time ago, at the inability of his own team as well as now at the referee, today, he mostly stayed silent. Because he still remembered what Ermal had said earlier, about loud noises, and about shouting, and yes, it was only football, but he couldn't risk shattering the peacefulness they had achieved by now.

So Fabrizio just kept shooting daggers with his eyes at the TV, and therewhile, Ermal watched him from the side. Fabrizio seemed to be so invested in the match that it was safe to take some time to observe him, and so Ermal's eyes roamed over his face, his cheekbones, his concentrated eyes, his messy hair. His throat that kept swallowing, his fingers peeking out of the hoodie's sleeves, drumming a rhythm at Fabri's knee. And then, his eyes turned wide, because for once, that pass had looked promising, and shortly after, Fabrizio jumped up from his seat, delight about the goal that just had been scored all over his face. Shortly after, he turned towards Ermal with a bright smile, and Ermal couldn't have said that he ever had been a huge fan of AS Roma, but today, their goal caused him to smile rather happy too. 

Fabrizio sat back down, maybe a little bit closer to Ermal than he had been sitting before, and a few minutes later, when he just wanted to get some more chips, Ermal had the same idea. So their fingers brushed in the chips bowl, just for a second, but still, it made Ermal smile once again. Another smile than earlier, a smaller one, and he wasn't quite sure why this felt so... different, than from when they had hugged earlier for example, but somehow, it did. The halftime break began and Ermal just was caught up in thoughts about how he maybe wouldn't mind watching Roma's matches more often when Fabrizio turned down the volume of the commercials and moved a bit in his seat, so he was facing Ermal.

Ermal looked at him, wondering what he would say now, sure he wouldn’t predict it right, because Fabrizio was somehow always taking him by surprise. And again, Ermal had thought Fabrizio would offer some comment on the game, ask about which team he supported, maybe whether he had played himself, but that was not what he got.

“Is it - are you okay like this?”

No meaningless small talk to fill the break in football, instead again well-meant concern for his well-being. Ermal smiled at Fabrizio, meeting his eye, nodding. He was okay. He was more than okay, now. Thanks to Fabrizio and his surprising ability to calm Ermal down, ground him, and who somehow exactly knew what to say, to do, what not to say, what not to do.

The atmosphere had chanced now, it wasn’t awkward like before, it wasn’t heavy like before, it wasn’t full of uncertainties like before. Or, that it still was, but it had changed. Now, it wasn’t so much uncertainty as  _ possibility _ , and Ermal liked it. He liked spending time with Fabrizio, he realized, now that everything had calmed down a little. And he realized he’d love to know more about him, to get to know him. Properly.

Ermal let his eyes roam around the room, pausing on the guitar in the corner next to a large plant. He remembered their conversation earlier, at dinner, discussing music. And hadn’t Fabrizio said he played a little too? Maybe he would like to play something?

Fabrizio had followed Ermal’s gaze, and smiled softly when he noticed what it had landed on. He looked back at Ermal, cocking his head to the side in a silent question.

“Maybe… Could you play something?” Ermal asked, hoping the answer would be yes. If that conversation before had been anything to go on, music would be a perfect way to strengthen that emerging bond between them. And he was just really curious about how Fabrizio could play, what he would play.

Fabrizio didn’t say anything, but he did get up to get the guitar, sitting back down on the couch again at an angle, facing Ermal.

“Any requests?” he said with a smile at Ermal, before he started strumming the strings lightly.

Some music sounded for a second, until it suddenly stopped and Ermal could see a flicker of something flash over Fabrizio’s face. Something, that looked rather a lot like… pain? He looked on in confusion.

“Fabrizio? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing! Nothing, everything is perfectly fine! Except, I can’t play right now. I’m sorry. Let’s just watch the game, yes?”

Ermal didn’t reply, staring at Fabrizio, who wasn’t meeting his eyes. Fabrizio started to get up to put the guitar back again, but Ermal stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. He looked intently at Fabrizio, but he was stubbornly looking at everything but him. Something was not right here. Something did not make sense. He’d been perfectly willing to play guitar before, but when he actually started playing, he said he  _ couldn’t. _

Ermal looked at the guitar, which seemed fine, and it had sounded okay too, that was not the problem, it couldn’t be. Then Ermal remembered that brief expression of pain, before Fabrizio got his face under control again. He couldn’t play, because it hurt? Was that it? Suddenly, his eye fell on Fabrizio’s right wrist, still on the guitar. His wrist, Ermal noticed with a shock, that was covered in bruises.

“Fabrizio, what…” he trailed off, not finishing the question, because with a heavy heart, he realized he already knew the answer.

“It’s nothing Ermal, leave it be. Please,” Fabrizio said, voice hardly above a whisper, closing his eyes now.

Slowly, Ermal reached out, carefully taking Fabrizio’s hand in his own, pulling it closer so that he could inspect the wrist better. Now he saw there weren’t only bruises, on one side the skin was grazed and red, grazed in a way Ermal remembered from playing games outside when he was young, grazed from scraping over pavement. But he knew that Fabrizio did not have such an innocent explanation for his wounds.

Ermal remembered that dark night, the cold, the adrenaline. He remembered sitting on Fabrizio's chest, and how he had pinned down his hand with his knee. Hard. Remembered the  _ satisfaction _ he had felt when Fabrizio's fingers had stopped moving, before he had known that it was  _ Fabrizio _ whom he was hurting, and that those fingers would bring him kindness, grounding, gentle touches, everything so opposite from trying to hurt him. No,  _ he _ had been the one to hurt Fabrizio. Had hurt him bad enough to paint his wrist in colours Ermal hadn't seen in quite some time, and that still looked as terrible as they did in his memory. Ermal remembered how he had  _ laughed _ , faced with a panicked, helpless,  _ hurt _ Fabrizio underneath him, and in that moment, he felt like he wouldn't be able to laugh ever again.

"Ermal-", Fabrizio tried, and then let the name hang in the air between them, because he didn't know what he might say. How he might help.

Fabrizio's bruised wrist still was held by Ermal's fingers, their touch lighter than a butterfly’s, and he kept staring down at it. At the proof of what he had done to someone he didn't even know, to someone who would turn out to show him nothing but kindness, so much more kindness than he deserved.

"I'm so-", and Ermal didn't finish his sentence either, because an  _ I'm sorry _ once again wasn't even close to being enough. Ermal was convinced that you shouldn't forgive someone who hurt you that badly, so he wouldn't ask Fabrizio for forgiveness.

"Ermal, please, look at me. This... it will be fine in a few days, I'll be able to play guitar again and nothing will have happened, I promise, I'll play something for you-"

When the first sob shook through his body, Ermal let go of Fabrizio's wrist, took a step back.

"Thank you for your hot chocolate, and for how kind you've been", Ermal whispered, his tear-filled eyes meeting Fabrizio's, and his words sounded awfully like a goodbye.

And then, Ermal walked out of Fabrizio's living room without a look back. Walked out of the flat, his shoulders trembling. Fabrizio watched him leave, his feet frozen to the spot, and he feared that Ermal might be trying to walk out of his life as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry.  
> We know.  
> Please leave a comment if you're still alive <3


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ermal is meeting his friends for lunch...

Ermal awoke from a very, very bad night. Really, he couldn’t quite call it awoke because that implied he had slept at all. He hadn’t. He had lain on his bed, staring at the ceiling, thoughts spinning in maddening, tightening circles, all coming to the same conclusion.

He had hurt Fabrizio, really _hurt_ him. And in the moment, he hadn’t cared, hadn’t even noticed, he’d only been gleeful that he was stronger than that would-be murderer. But of course, Fabrizio was no murderer. He was the sweetest, kindest, most thoughtful person Ermal had met in a long time, and he had hurt him.

It made him no better than his father, didn’t it? He could pretend all his life he was somehow a better man, but in reality he wasn’t. Of course, now he regretted it, regretted it with all his heart, but what good would that do? An apology would not take those bruises away, would not let Fabrizio play guitar as he wanted. An apology would not take the memory away, the knowledge of what Ermal was capable of. A promise that it would not happen again was worthless, Ermal knew that well.

What he could do, what he should do, was leave Fabrizio in peace, make sure he would never hurt him again, no matter in what way. That did not change anything, but at least Fabrizio would be safe. And as it came to himself, Ermal didn’t know how he would deal with this, he didn’t know if he _could_ deal with this. In just a moment, his whole image of himself had tilted, shifted, grown dark. 

He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, dropping his head in his hands. He knew he should get up, get on with his day, he was supposed to meet his friends for lunch. He had to explain the whole murder situation, which just a day ago had seemed funny, an anecdote showing how silly he’d been, a story that would be told and retold to amuse.

But now? Nothing about it was funny, it absolutely was not. And Ermal did not know how he could face his friends, knowing what he did now. He was not who they thought he was. He was not who he had always thought he was. For a second he contemplated the tempting, oh so tempting possibility of staying in bed, of ignoring the world. But really it was not that tempting when he thought of it a bit more, then his day would just resemble his night, and the sunlight that fell in the room filtered by the thin curtains would not be able to light up his thoughts.

He had to face the facts. He had to deal with this. He had to tell his friends, they should know what he did. After that, no doubt, there would be the chance to crawl into bed again, lonely and despised. And it would be exactly what he deserved.

So Ermal stood up, heavily sighing, and when he went to the bathroom, he did his best to avoid his own reflection in the mirror. He was not ready for what he might see in his own eyes, and he also didn't see the need to put any effort into his look today. It was not as if his friends hadn't witnessed him at his worst before, so Ermal was sure that they wouldn't be shocked to see him with untamed hair, eye rings even darker than usual and in a baggy old shirt. Especially not in comparison to the things they'd learn about him today. He might be looking as polished as for his sister's graduation, and Ermal still was convinced that his friends, if they'd even stay that, would look at him oh so different from now on.

Ermal went to the kitchen next, made himself a coffee, and he purposely reached into the back of the cupboard to get a random mug, not the one that Andrea had bought him last Christmas and that he'd usually have taken. A look towards the clock at the wall told him that it nearly was 11 already, and Ermal decided to leave for his lunch date. Staying in the flat with no one but his dark thoughts for company would do no good, and this way he'd have the time to walk there instead of taking the bus, which also was a pleasant perspective. Not only because the way towards his bus stop might bring memories that were rather unpleasant, for reasons so different than he first had feared, and still so terrible in their own way; Ermal also hoped that the fresh air might help to clear up his head a little. So he wrapped himself in a jacket that was a little too large for him, always had been, but he'd had it for years, and there was something so comforting about getting swallowed in that familiar fabric, it almost made Ermal smile. Almost.

In the staircase, Ermal met one of his neighbors, an elderly lady who shared her flat with her grandson, and he put a lot of effort into putting on a convincing smile for her, because this nice little grandma wouldn't deserve being faced with his terrible mood. She smiled back, thanked him for helping her grandson with his homework last week, for what had to be the 5th time, and then, she invited Ermal over for some tea and cake the following week. Ermal could only nod, his heart not being able to bear her disappointment once he would decline. And he couldn't quite fit her kind invitation into his self concept at that moment, but nevertheless, it made him feel at least a little bit better, as well as the bonbon she slipped into Ermal's pocket before starting her way towards her own flat. Once he had made it out onto the street, Ermal placed the candy in his mouth, and smiled once the taste of strawberries filled his mouth.

He decided to take the long way to the cafe he was meeting his friends. Now that he was outside, he rather liked the fresh air, and he could walk along the Tiber like this. Of course, the river wasn’t like the sea at all, and a vast, glittery expanse of water would have helped his mood a lot more right now, but still, it was water, it was moving, and it was nice to be there.

There were young families with babies in strollers, or small children on little bikes. There were people walking their dog, couples sharing a coffee on this fine Sunday morning. Many of them nodded at Ermal, or mumbled a greeting, and he did the same in return, because it would be rude not to. 

He walked on, genuinely beginning to enjoy the sunshine on his face, even despite everything else. He now approached a group of teenage boys, who were kicking a ball back and forth. Suddenly, one of them missed it, and the ball started a course that would very definitely take it into the water to be carried off by the river. It was more out of reflex than out of a conscious decision, that Ermal jogged a few steps and managed to stop the ball just on the edge of the bank. He kicked it back to the boys, more skillful than he would have thought, and for a second he felt a bit disappointed that none of his friends had been there to witness this, especially Andrea, who always made fun of his football skills. Only for a second, though, because then he remembered that after today, Andrea probably would not make fun of his football skills again, and Ermal would have no one to play with in the future. 

That train of thought was quickly stopped, though, as the boys approached him to profusely thank him for saving the ball from doom. Ermal tried to tell them it was just a small thing, anyone would have done the same, but he had to admit it was nice that they appreciated it so much.

He continued his route, until he finally reached the cafe. He saw that both Marco and Andrea were already there, and they’d been able to grab a table outside, nicely situated in the half shade.

With a mumbled greeting, Ermal let himself fall into a chair, to find his friends looking at him. 

“Ermal, what happened? Did you have a nightmare?” Andrea asked, sounding worried.

“Andrea, honestly, look at him, he hasn’t even slept at all,” Marco interjected before Ermal could so much as open his mouth. He then turned to Ermal, putting a soft hand on his shoulder. “What’s wrong? You can tell us, you know.” 

There was so much understanding, so much compassion in Marco's voice, as well as in his eyes, and Ermal wanted to keep this just a little longer; casting away the thoughts of how this was a selfish thing. He just wished to have one more weekend lunch with his friends, the way it always had been, the kind of companionship surrounding them where no one had to explicitly say that they would meet like that again the following week, because they all just _knew_ they would.

"Can we maybe eat something first?", Ermal asked, no matter that he didn't feel hungry at all.

Both his friends nodded, and when Marco shortly after ordered, Ermal had to fight a hurricane of contradicting emotions. Because he had known exactly what Marco would order today; it was just one of those things you learned over the years of being friends with someone, and while that usually would make him smile, even if it was just a little private smile, today, it didn't. It had Ermal wondering what might happen to all that knowledge that he had collected about those people over the years, not even actively trying - just noticing things, sometimes the smallest, most casual things imaginable. Noticing Marco's pasta choices and how they got influenced by the season, or how Andrea always stepped into a door with his left foot first. Noticing so many more little things, things that might seem casual, but ultimately, made his friends into the people they were. The people he loved.

Ermal hadn't been aware of the tears that started to form in his eyes until Andrea suddenly looked at him with something alarmed in his gaze, and he didn't even make an effort to wipe them away, for he knew that there would be more to come.

Ermal looked at both Marco and Andrea, and then said: "I love you two, you know", just because he could, because right now, they still were listening to him.

"And I-", Ermal tried to continue, but then his voice shattered like glass. He couldn’t finish that. He just couldn’t say what he had on his mind, because he knew it would only worry his friends more. It would sound like a goodbye - and while that was exactly what it was, it wasn’t in the way his friends would think, and he couldn’t do that to them, letting them think that, not even for a second.

So Ermal wiped his eyes anyway, and said, after clearing his throat of the lump that had formed there, “Never mind. Let’s just eat.”

Both Andrea and Marco looked at him, silently. He could see their minds moving, trying to figure out what had happened to him. Andrea took a small tentative bite of his pasta, still looking at him with wide eyes, probably wondering if it was really okay to do something so normal as eating when Ermal clearly was not feeling good. Marco hadn’t even touched his cutlery at all. Instead, he let the minutes pass by, just sitting there, watching Ermal.

“You’re not eating,” he pointed out finally, softly, and the comment caused Andrea to put his fork down again.

Ermal knew he wasn’t eating. He wasn’t hungry, and he couldn’t stand the thought of eating his pasta now, even though he usually really liked it. Why should he eat, when his life was about to break into pieces? Besides, he was focusing very much on not breaking down crying again, break down into more than just tears this time. A tiny part of his mind reminded him of the last time he sat in a cafe like this, trying to keep it together, failing then, utterly failing. Had that really been only yesterday? It felt an age ago. Yesterday, it had been Fabrizio who saved him, who had called him a friend, until Ermal realized how much he had fucked it up. Really, he did not understand how Fabrizio had even agreed to meet him at all, he shouldn’t have, not after what Ermal had done, and if he wasn’t going to protect himself, then Ermal would do it for him. Protect him, by staying away.

But that was beside the point. Now, a day later, another cafe, other friends, two this time, old ones, not a new one, and yet he was about to lose everything anyway.

“Ermal, is this about that man you were going to meet yesterday? What _happened?_ ” Marco whispered, and as Ermal looked up, he could see his in his friend’s eyes that he was imagining the worst scenarios. It was almost funny how Marco assumed Fabrizio had been the one to do something bad, while it had been Ermal himself who had ruined everything. Marco deserved to know who he’d been friends with, Andrea too, they should know what he was capable of, so they could save themselves and get away.

"Yes, it is about him. About Fabrizio", Ermal finally confirmed, saying the name as if it was a distant memory already.

Andrea and Marco just looked at him, giving Ermal all the time he needed. But he decided to get this over with quickly, or at least to try that.

"So, Andrea, let me fill you in on some things first. In the last few weeks, I've sometimes-, I had gotten the impression that someone might stalk me. There was a man, whom I kept seeing, late at night, and I got... scared. Marco kept telling me that it was nothing, only my imagination, but I wouldn't believe him. And then, finally, Thursday night, that man called out for me. And I", Ermal had to laugh about his own stupidity, bitterly, not an ounce of humor in his voice, "I was convinced that he was trying to kill me."

Understanding flashed in Andrea's eyes, as if some things finally made sense, about a panicked Marco and a sleepless night, about worries without knowing their exact reason.

"It turned out that I was wrong. Very wrong. He hadn't been trying to hurt me, he just wanted to give me back my beanie, which I had forgotten on the bus. So we... we talked. And he actually was nice, so very nice."

Marco had nodded along so far, and now, Ermal could see his friend's curiosity increasing, as they were getting to territories which were new for Marco as well now.

"We agreed to meet again, which we did, yesterday. And it was, well, different from what I expected. But Fabrizio turned out to be so kind, and understanding, I really was having a good time. Then, we went to his flat, he cooked, and we were watching Roma's match, but in the halftime..."

Both of Ermal's friends had listened in silence so far, giving his story all the room it needed, but now, Marco couldn't take it anymore.

"Ermal. I want you to tell me what he did. _Please_."

Ermal couldn't bear to look into Marco's eyes when he answered that.

"He didn't do anything. I did."

Marco leaned back in his chair, eyes on Ermal, trying to make sense of that admission, trying to line up scenario after scenario, making it fit with reasons why Ermal could be sitting here like this, crying and looking as if the world was going to end.

Ermal knew that whatever he had in mind, it wouldn't be the right thing. Maybe Marco thought that Ermal had accidentally broken something, expensive or with sentimental value, and that guilt had kept him up all night. Maybe he thought Ermal had done something stupid, like kissing this man in the break between the two halves of the football match... Who knew what Marco was thinking, the only thing Ermal knew was that he would get it wrong. He was quiet, biting his lip, wondering how best to say this, explain things, he only wanted to have to say this once, he couldn't _bear_ to say it more times...

"Ermal, what did you _do?_ " Andrea whispered, as the silence stretched on, his pasta now entirely forgotten.

Ermal took a deep breath, and then started speaking, in a detached way, putting no emotion in his words whatsoever. 

“I didn’t do anything yesterday, I just found out what I did yesterday. You know, that night I first met him, when I was convinced he was going to kill me, I attacked him, got him to the ground… And when he tried to get up, I pinned his arms down. I was so happy I had the upper hand there, that he was just helpless, that I was powerful…” 

Ermal stared at the traffic light in the distance, watching its colours change. From the corner of his eye, he saw Marco shift in his seat. No doubt he was confused. To him, none of this information was new, this was all as Ermal had told him early the morning after it had happened. And then, Ermal had been embarrassed, yes, but not completely, utterly defeated like he seemed now.

“Ermal…” Marco started, whispering, but then stopped, because he did not know what to say, how to coax the words out of Ermal, he could just sit and wait until Ermal was ready.

"I hurt him", Ermal finally said, speaking towards the lamppost at the other side of the street.

"He's still got bruises all around his wrist, he was in too much pain to even play his guitar, and I... I must have hurt him so badly, if he still was hurting like that yesterday. And I _didn't care_. He couldn't defend himself, couldn't do anything, hadn't done anything, and yet, I kept going. Kept hurting him. I don't... I always feared becoming that person. But it seems like I can't fight it now. Maybe it's just who I am. And I, I thought you should know", Ermal finished, having whispered the last two sentences.

Alright, Ermal had said it. In a way, his admission even felt liberating, and he knew that at least things would be over soon now. It wouldn't be too long until he could curl back into his bed, and try to forget the world around him and all the people in it, the people he had heard, the people he had disappointed. Finally, he looked back at his... at Marco and Andrea. Who were looking at him not quite like Ermal had expected it.

He had expected them to look disgusted, to look upset with him, to leave and turn their backs on him. But they didn’t. In fact, they hadn’t really changed much from before he had said it. They still looked at him, worried, attentive, waiting for more, apparently. They just hadn’t understood. Ermal swallowed, he knew that he had to say it again, explain it even more clearly, and how he hated that, but he knew he should, he had to face the truth. He had to make Andrea and Marco understand the person he was.

“I hurt him, like my f-father hurt us -” 

Before he could even finish that sentence, Marco sat up straight in his chair with a shock.

"No. Don't you dare to even think that. Don't you dare to compare yourself to him for even just a second. You know this is not true. You _must_ know it isn't. You're good and kind and such a wonderful person Ermal, and yes, you made a mistake, and you've been stupid, but you'd never... you'd never hurt someone on purpose, you wouldn't make someone suffer, and you... I'm sorry for how things went with Fabrizio, I truly am, but you're drawing the wrong conclusions here. If you'd call yourself an idiot, fine, most of my friends are idiots - sorry Andrea, you know it’s true -, and Ermal, sometimes you're one too, just as I am, but don't you _dare_ to get unsure about whether you're a good person. Because you're one of the best people I know, and I love you. So much. Do you hear me?"

“But I _did_ hurt him on purpose. I did it on purpose and I was _happy_ about it. How does that make me any different? You can’t just say that it doesn’t.” 

“Ermal, but don’t you see? It’s totally different. You were defending yourself. You were mistaken, yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that you only hurt him because you felt threatened. _That_ is what makes the difference. You would never hurt this man, Fabrizio, without reason. You would never hurt anyone without reason. I know you, Ermal, and I know that.” 

“But… I did…”

“It was a mistake, Ermal, you did not do it on purpose. And I think Fabrizio also knows that. He would not have reacted the way he did otherwise. You said you had a nice time, didn’t you?” 

"We did", Ermal confirmed, the memory tinting his voice with sadness, "He hugged me, and this felt.. good. And he had asked before, if it was okay. He.. he called me his _friend_ , you know. And he made me hot chocolate, with little marshmallows even, while he should have..."

"Stop it Ermal, please", and now, it was Andrea who spoke, "He shouldn't have behaved any other way. He- Fabrizio you said it was, yes? Fabrizio was there for you, and if he wants to be your friend, that's exactly what he should do. He sounds like a really nice dude, and Ermal, you're that as well. Marco is right, you're a great person. No discussion here. And maybe you should try to be friends with Fabrizio, no? You should try to forgive yourself, and just.. let it happen. Maybe something really nice could come out of this, so just allow yourself this. Allow yourself to make a new friend, even if your circumstances of meeting might have been rather unusual."

Marco nodded along to this, and then added: "If you really had such a nice time, if you felt good around him, you should just call him. I'm sure you can figure things out."

Ermal decided to only answer that last thing, it was easier to focus on little details than on everything that Andrea had said.

"I haven't even got his number."

"Okay, doesn't matter right now. Ermal? Can you do me a favor?", Marco asked, and Ermal just looked at him with widened eyes.

"Of course."

"Try to believe us, would you? There's a reason we've been sticking around with you for years. And we're not going to leave you. Not now, not ever. Okay?"

Ermal nodded, mostly because he knew Marco would not take anything else for an answer, but a tiny bit because he believed him. Both Andrea and Marco smiled at him at that, and Ermal managed to send them a watery smile back.

"Great. Now let's eat," Andrea said, picking up his fork again, but, Ermal noticed, not actually eating until he did.

He thought he wasn't hungry, but when he swallowed the first bite of his pasta, he realized that he actually was. But then, he hadn't eaten since the meal Fabrizio had cooked last night and the hands of chips he'd had during the football match. Of course he was hungry. And he knew he should eat, the past few days had been so emotional and it would leave him drained of any energy.

Marco looked at him with an expression that seemed to resemble that of a mother bird that saw its chick fly for the first time.

"Are you feeling a little better?"

Ermal nodded again, but now added, "Yes, I do. Thank you. Really."

Marco just squeezed his shoulder to say, "That's what friends are for, " and continued eating.

And Ermal did feel better. His friends had managed to calm him down a bit, turn away from that black and white thinking that has kept him awake all night. Yes, he had hurt Fabrizio, but he hadn't meant it as such. Yes, he'd been happy about it when it happened, but he had not been happy about the hurting, but about having the upper hand and not being murdered. He had hurt Fabrizio, but it didn't make him like his father, not at all, not with the situations so so different. If only he had some way of contacting Fabrizio now, saying again how sorry he was, maybe explaining it one more time, asking how he could make up for it - he was back to that, apparently. He knew he couldn't, Fabrizio had disappeared into his past, and he had to turn to the future. At least now with a better image of himself, one he could live with.

They finished their food, paid, and then stood on the sidewalk a bit indecisively, not knowing if they should do something else, or just go home. Finally, Andrea spoke.

"Guys, do you want to play football later? I have to go home first to get my laundry but we can meet up later!"

"You do laundry?" Marco asked, eyebrows raised, smile on his face.

"He means we'd love to!" Ermal interjected, before the two could start bickering more.

"Great!" Andrea said, beaming at him, then launching himself at Ermal for a tight hug.

"Hey, you can't leave me out!" Marco said, joining the hug.

Ermal still felt their warmth envelop him when he made his way home later, smiling, because he still had his friends, and they were going to play football later. Life was much better than he had thought this morning. And maybe, it would continue like this...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due to mysterious circumstances, we're getting exactly 6 comments on each chapter here, never more, never less, though it's not always the same people commenting. And this highly is fascinating xD


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New day, new chances to turn his life around. Ermal realizes something, and decides to go find his way back to Fabrizio's place. Will he manage?

On Monday morning, Ermal awoke on his sofa curled in a blanket but still in his clothes. He blinked, while his eyes got adjusted to the daylight, and soon was able to make sense of why he might not find himself in his bed: he'd been exhausted the previous evening, and the movie that was shown on TV hadn't been all too interesting, so he had thought that if he'd close his eyes, just for a few little minutes... he'd still have the opportunity to move himself to bed later. Only that this hadn't happened - Ermal had been fast asleep the whole night, the TV playing on low volume in the background, and though his body probably would have preferred its usual sleeping place, though his legs were aching and his neck felt a little stiff, Ermal sat up with a smile. Because he remembered the reason why he had been so exhausted yesterday, and why he could feel the muscles in his thighs so clearly now. 

He had been playing football with Marco and Andrea in the park in the afternoon, their match illuminated by the evening sun and later by the old fashioned lamp posts, and everything had just been the usual. Well, not  _ everything _ . How competitive they were during the match, how Andrea made fun of that one free kick of Ermal's that somehow ended up in the trees, that had been the usual. But the hug that Ermal received from Marco after he had finally managed to score a goal against his friend had been unusual - which goalie would be happy to let a ball pass? - and it had been a little tighter than their hugs usually were. 

And Ermal had just felt at home, chasing the ball there with his friends, going for ice cream later, after they all were exhausted and covered in grass stains. This had become a tradition at some point, ice cream after football, and by now, they knew all the ice cream shops even remotely close to the park; those who sold Marco's favourite hazelnut ice cream and those who also were opened in winter, when their football pitch would sometimes be covered by frost, and those who still sold ice cream even though it was the time of day where most people's thoughts were occupied with dinner or sleep. 

Yesterday, they had been to one of those, and after a clap to the back from Andrea and a ruffling of his hair from Marco, Ermal had made his way home. Unlike the morning, he hadn't walked, he knew his legs wouldn't have appreciated that, and took the tram instead, smiling about how well this whole day had developed. 

When he stood up from the sofa now, he still had a hint of a smile on his face, and after a stretch and a quick shower, Ermal made himself a coffee.  He checked the time, but he knew he had hours yet before he had to go to work. There was no need to rush, absolutely none, and he didn’t want to. His mood was so much better than yesterday morning, and he was enjoying the change.

Being with his friends had really helped,  _ they _ had really helped him feel better. He still wasn’t happy about what he’d done to Fabrizio, but at least now he could see that Marco and Andrea were right, he hadn’t done it on purpose, and he never would. 

Ermal decided to walk to the corner bakery to get a croissant for breakfast, and as he walked, he watched people rush by on their way to work or appointments, or just places to be. He took his time, taking the long way home through a small neighbourhood park. There, others were also enjoying the morning sunshine without hurrying. Two elderly ladies sat gossiping and knitting on a bench next to the fountain, while an old man with a great white moustache was reading his newspaper while smoking a pipe. Ermal made his way home again, taking his croissant out to the small balcony attached to his kitchen.

He really had to do this more often, he thought, while brushing the last crumbs off his fingers, and looking out over the street below, eyes falling on the never ending stream of people moving around this city. On the other side of the street, a toddler was playing on a balcony, his mother keeping a watchful eye out while she was leafing through a magazine. In the building next to that, two stories down, Ermal could see a young couple hanging out the laundry together. He had to smile at that, such an everyday task made fun by doing it together. 

He kept up his watch over his neighbours, because he knew that if he would go inside now, faced with the emptiness of his own flat, his mood would turn sour instantly. What he saw next didn’t help, though. A teenager practicing a guitar on a balcony on the street corner. The noise of the cars was obscuring most of the sounds, but a few lost notes still reached Ermal.

Of course he couldn’t help but think back to the last time he had heard a guitar, no matter how briefly. Saturday night. That amazing, lovely,  _ awful _ Saturday night. He wished he could see Fabrizio one more time, explain, apologize, properly apologize...

And then he realized something. On that afternoon, when everything had gone right and then so so wrong, Fabrizio had taken him home. To his flat. Which meant that... Ermal could find it again. 

He abruptly stood up and went inside to get his shoes and a jacket. And there wasn't a concrete plan in his head, no detailed ideas about what he'd even say, but a faint echo of Andrea's voice, telling him he should allow himself to make a new friend here. Which was what he wanted, as Ermal realized now - he would like to be Fabrizio's friend, he'd really like that. Even if he hadn't forgiven himself totally for that fateful night yet, he wouldn't allow that to ruin what might become a beautiful friendship one day. As long as Fabrizio still wanted that of course, after Ermal's behavior on Saturday evening. But there'd be time to worry about that later. Now, Ermal just had to find Fabrizio's building again. And that shouldn't be too hard, right? 

Only that Ermal soon realized how he hadn't really paid attention to the way. Not when he had walked there, his head filled with fear and confusion and a glint of something positive, with Fabrizio's hand at his shoulder, grounding him; and not when he had walked away, Fabrizio's wrist still in front of his inner eye and tears running down his cheeks. It couldn't be too far away, they used the same bus stop after all, and Ermal had made it home by foot, but he had no idea how long his emotionally compromised self had walked then, or which way he might have taken. 

So after a few pointless twists and turns, Ermal admitted that he couldn't find it again. The fact that pretty much all of the buildings here looked alike also didn't help. So Ermal leaned against a wall, and sighed. Maybe he could try to reconstruct the way they had taken from the cafe? He glanced down at his watch, and realised that this would have to be a task for another day - he only had a little less than an hour left until he had to be at work, and he wasn't too sure about where exactly he even was at the moment.

That really should be his priority right now, figuring out where he was, so he could then take the bus to get to work. Ermal made his way through the streets, still taking his time, he knew he couldn’t be too far away from what he knew, he’d been going mostly in circles - at least, he thought.

And he turned out to be right, because he went straight ahead, and found the small square where once a week a market was held. He took the street to the right that led to a bigger bus station nearby. From there it would be easier to catch a bus to work than when he’d wait at the bus stop closer to his flat.

The street was a shopping street, and it was quite busy. Ermal walked on, evading the people who were crossing his path. Suddenly, though, he slowed down. A little boy was sitting on the pavement, his back against a closed storefront that was covered in graffiti. Crying. He seemed about eight years old, but really, it was hard to tell, curled up on himself as he was.

Ermal looked around, but no one else seemed to pay attention to the boy. Did other people not see him? Were they that used to people sitting on the fringes of the street? There were enough of them, the homeless and the beggars. This was just a boy, though, all alone, and he didn’t look homeless. He just looked sad.

Ermal continued to look up and down the street. Surely there was a parent around somewhere, right? Maybe the boy was just having a temper tantrum and his parents were letting him cool off a bit. But Ermal saw no one, no one looking on from a distance, checking that all was well while giving the boy some space.

Besides, the boy didn’t look as if he was having a tantrum, this was a sadness that came from deeper down. Ermal would know.

That decided it. He made his way over to the little boy, and crouched down next to him. 

“Hi there,” he began, but didn’t quite know how to continue. Even if his parents weren’t around now, no doubt they had carefully instructed the boy not to talk to strangers. Wasn’t that the number one parenting rule? He looked up a bit warily at Ermal, but didn’t seem scared. At least there was that. The boy swiped an already wet sleeve over his eyes and sniffed.

“I’m Ermal,” Ermal continued, “Do you want to tell me your name?”

He waited, but didn’t get a response, except from a suppressed sob.

“Can I help you then? Did you lose your mom or dad?”

The boy looked at Ermal a moment longer, caution in his gaze, and then, he seemed to decide it safe to talk to him. Some of the tension left his shoulders, and now, he didn't look so cautious anymore, just…  _ lost _ . 

"I don't know where my mom is", he whispered, and Ermal could hear how hard he was trying to not sound scared, to scramble together all the bravery he could find inside himself, wear it like an armor to hide how intimidated he was by the situation. Ermal's heart ached for the boy.

"And your dad?", he asked after a moment of debating with himself if he should. He just hoped he wouldn't make this worse, that the little boy had a father who was kind and caring.

"I wanted to visit him, you know", the boy started, and looked down, "and I thought I had seen his house when I've been out to the store with mom, so I just sneaked away for a minute... But it wasn't dad's house. And when I got back to the store, I couldn't see mom anymore. So I started searching, but-", he sniffed, "I can't find her."

"Hey, I'm sure you will find her again", Ermal tried to comfort, and the boy looked at him,  eyes wide. 

“But I don’t know where she is! How can I find her in the whole city?” He almost broke down into tears again, and Ermal knew he had to do something. What, though?

“Shh, we will find her. I will help you. Everything will be alright, okay?”

The boy gave him another look, but calmed down a little.

“Now, where was that shop where you last saw her? Let’s start there.”

Slowly, the boy got up and against all of Ermal’s expectations, took his hand to lead him to the store in question. It was with a bit of well-disguised despair that he looked up at the building, of course it had to be the big department store with three different floors. Though, what would no doubt work in his favour here was that these places came with a customer service desk, right?

Ermal walked in, still his hand locked with the boy’s, and looked around, trying to find some signs to where they wanted to go. Before he made it very far, a store employee pressed a flyer in his free hand.

“Welcome, sir, only today we have a 25% discount on all toys! Maybe your son can find something nice!” The girl smiled brightly at him, and for a second, Ermal tried to construct a sentence that would make it clear this boy was not his son, but then decided against it. It would no doubt bring up more questions and it was just not relevant right now.

“Excuse me, where can I find customer service?” he asked instead, and followed the directions she gave him. He kept a tight grip on the boy’s hand and guided them through the store. Finally, they made it to the desk.

“How can I help you?” another very smiley employee asked him, and Ermal explained the situation. He had almost finished his story, when suddenly he felt the boy release his hand. A bit alarmed he looked up - he was responsible now, okay, and he was going to do a good job. The boy, however, ran a few steps towards the woman who was just approaching the service desk.

“Mama!”

“Oh _passerotto,_ I was so worried! Where did you go?”

The two hugged tightly, and Ermal looked on, a smile appearing on his face at the sight. That was easier than he had feared it might be.

“I wanted to visit papa, I thought it was close, but I couldn’t find his building, and then I couldn’t find you and -”

“Dear, papa lives in the neighbourhood, but not so close to here! Why did you want to go to him? You’ll see him later this week, and we could call him if there was something important.”

“No, I couldn’t call, I called him this morning and he didn’t sound like himself and he didn’t even  _ laugh _ and also he said he couldn’t watch football with me and I… I was  _ worried _ .”

“Baby, listen, we talked about this, what uncle Roberto talked about, it happened a long time ago, yes? Papa is all right, he is, I promise. Don’t worry about that, it’s all in the past. Really.”

Ermal rather felt like this was getting too personal to linger around and eavesdrop. He should just slip away, disappear, and leave the two in peace. Just as he had almost made it to the escalators, he felt a tap on his shoulder. Ermal turned around, and looked into the woman’s face, the boy beside her.

She smiled brightly at Ermal, and he could see the relief in her eyes, about having her son back with her. And Ermal could understand her worries - he still remembered it all too well, how they once had lost Sabina in the middle of a carnival when Ermal had been maybe 15, and how worried he had been, how his mom who always was so strong had gone pale and how there had been tears in her eyes when they finally found Sabina again, who turned out to have wanted to get some cotton candy.

The woman spoke to Ermal, her voice warm, and somewhere in the back of his head, he noticed how pretty she was.

"Thank you so much for helping my son get back to me, that was so kind, I can't thank you enough!"

"It was nothing, really, everyone would have-", but then, Ermal stopped his own words, because he realized that it wasn't true. That not everyone would have helped a lost little boy, no matter which sad conclusions this would tell about humanity.

She smiled again, and leaned forward to place a quick kiss at his cheek.

"Seriously,  _ thank you _ ", she said once again, and then turned around with one last smile.

The little boy waved at Ermal, his smile not quite as wide as his mom's but not less sincere, and then, he took her hand, and they walked away. Ermal finally stepped onto the escalator and watched the two as long as he could, before he got too low so they were out of his view, and he was very glad that he had been able to help these people.

Though there also was another thing that he was - very late, for work. There was a big clock above the shopping center's doors, and Ermal watched the hand move. He had around ten minutes left to get to work, and that was... not really enough. At least not if he would wait for a bus. So Ermal internally sighed for a second, and then decided that he would walk there. Or rather, run. Which certainly wouldn't be pleasant, he only recently had been reminded that he wasn't in a too sporty shape, and if yesterday's football match had gotten him anything, it was the fact that his thighs still hurt.

Still, he made it, reasonably on time (okay, five minutes late, but he could get away with that, for now), and as he took orders and delivered food, he maybe smiled a little more than usual. It was true, his plan to find Fabrizio again had failed, but at least it had given him the chance to help that poor lost boy, and that gave him a good feeling. He could always try to trace his way from the cafe to Fabrizio’s flat some other day. Surely he could find it? It couldn’t be that hard, and the universe couldn’t be  _ so _ against him that this had been the only chance he had of becoming friends with Fabrizio. Not when he had seen him so many times on the bus or on the way home. Suddenly, Ermal couldn’t wait until his shift had ended. Who knew, they might even meet tonight!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter :) It turns out, this whole thing is getting longer than we thought, but at least there's a break in the angst (for a while). Please let us know your thoughts! <3
> 
> Ps: About the nickname the boy gets called by his mom: _An affectionate metaphor for anyone who’s “learning to fly,” passerotto translates to “little sparrow.”_


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fabrizio has two phone calls and some thoughts. That's the chapter, basically.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We hope you have a very nice December and happy holidays :)

They did not meet. Fabrizio had really looked, hoped to see a glimpse of that curly hair he was watching out for. He was pretty sure he had taken this exact bus before, but there was no sight of Ermal this time. Maybe the restaurant he worked in was closed on Mondays. Maybe he had an evening off. Maybe he just had worked at a different time. All possible, all very good explanations, but all not what Fabrizio was happy with.

He wanted to find Ermal, he needed to find Ermal. He had left Fabrizio's flat so incredibly upset, and Fabrizio had some guesses of what he had been thinking. And all of those guesses were things Ermal just should not think. He should not hate himself because of what had happened. Fabrizio didn't blame him for anything. And now he needed to tell Ermal that.

But how to find him? Too late, Fabrizio realized he did not have Ermal's phone number. He did not know where he lived. If he was completely honest, he didn’t quite remember his last name. How was he ever going to find him?

So he had hoped, foolishly maybe, that he would just happen to take the same bus again, this evening after work, like that first night, which admittedly hadn’t been a Monday, but still, the whole situation could have such an easy solution. But now, putting his key in the lock of his front door, he had to admit it hadn't worked.

He dropped his keys, as always, on the table in the hall, and then made his way to the kitchen to get himself a beer. Just one, it was just a Monday, after all, but he needed something to dull the sharp pang of disappointment he was pretending not to feel. He sat on the couch and took out his phone, to find a missed call from Giada and a text message.

“Hi Fabri, call me please” it only said, and that was enough to make him stop and freeze. Had something happened? Had he done something? Forgotten something? After a glance at the time he decided he could at least try to call now, and if Giada was asleep already she would just not pick up. He hoped she would, though, because his mind was no doubt jumping to the wrong conclusions, and he didn’t need that to continue all night.

“Fabri?”

“Giada! What - You called me?”

“Oh, oh yes. Today I was out shopping with Libero, and I lost him for a bit. Nothing happened, he got away and I couldn’t find him  _ anywhere _ but then he was helped by this kind man who calmed him down and took him to the service desk of the store we were in. Anyway, I wanted to talk about the reason he ran off.”

“Which is…”

“He thought he was close to your place and he was worried about you. You know what he overheard last time with Roberto. Now, I know you better than this, but can you explain what happened that Lib might think this?”

Fabrizio shakily exhaled and sank deeper into his couch's pillows.

"I'd never, you  _ know  _ I'd never -", he started, and stopped. Because he knew that Giada indeed did know this, became aware of how this wasn't the point here. So he tried it differently. "What did Libero say?

"He mentioned that he called you, after school today I think it was, and that you couldn't watch football? I don't know if I'm right with this, but maybe he got worried that you were avoiding him or something the like? And he talked about you not laughing about one of his stories, and damn", Giada sighed, "you know how it is Fabri, once your mind already is in a dark place you're seeing things way more drastic than they'd usually be. I fear he got that from you as well as from me. So with him still thinking about that damn talk with Roberto, he probably didn't even take the possibility that the story wasn't that funny or something the like into consideration."

"It was funny", Fabrizio said, nearly voiceless, exhaling the words.

Giada was silent, but Fabrizio still heard her breathing over the line, knew that she was still awake. Just giving him time to sort out his thoughts. She'd always been good at that, at knowing him, what he needed, at giving him space, and that had been one of the reasons why Fabrizio had fallen in love with her all those years ago. And why she was one of his very best friends today.

"I've hurt my ribs the other day, and-, no, it's not bad, I'm managing, please don't worry! But it hurts a bit when I laugh for example, so I'm trying to avoid that. And about the match, I had promised him we'd watch Champions League together next week, but my boss, he didn't allow me to take the evening off. I hate it, but I... I fear I can't change it."

"Don't you think you should just explain that to Libero?"

"I don't want to worry him. Or to disappoint him", and Fabri ended it there, but an unsaid 'again', or an 'even worse' was swinging with his words.

"Oh Fabri, you wouldn't. Lib is a smart boy, and he  _ loves  _ you. You're his hero, you really are, and he'll  _ understand _ . Trust me, he will."

Fabrizio was silent for a second, trying to make himself believe Giada’s words. She was probably right, she usually was, but that didn’t make it any easier to let her words sink into his mind. Some days he still could not quite believe he had all this, this loving family. If you’d told him what, fifteen, twenty years ago that one day he would have a son that would look up to him like he was the best person in the world, and a little daughter that still trusted him to always save her, from  _ anything _ , he would just have laughed at you. And yet, that was exactly what he had. 

Some days he didn’t feel up to the task, some days he was convinced, completely convinced that all this trust, all this belief in him was only misplaced, and one of these days he would let everything fall apart, shatter, to leave only the broken pieces. So far, he hadn’t, but only because Giada and his friends were always there to prevent  _ him _ from falling apart, to prevent him from taking this whole life he had built with him in his fall.

“How is he now? Libero?” he asked finally, realizing Giada was still waiting for an answer.

“Better now. I calmed him down somewhat, but I wanted to ask you to please talk to him soon.”

“Yes, I’ll do that. Thank you,” Fabrizio answered, and then added softly after a short pause, “And you, how are you?”

“Me?”

Fabrizio didn’t reply, just waited for an answer. Two could play this game of giving the other time.

“I was just… so worried, when I couldn’t find Libero. One minute he was there and then when I turned around again to show him this jacket I found he was gone. I couldn’t find him anywhere.”

Fabrizio closed his eyes, he could hear the despair hiding in Giada’s voice, the despair of losing a child in a crowded place.

“So I went to their service desk and they announced it on the intercom but there was nothing, and the waiting was the worst, so I just looked again by myself, in the whole store, at the football things, at the toy’s section, even on the street for a while, but he was nowhere… And then I went back to the service desk because I had to talk to someone, someone had to tell me what to do… And there he was, Libero, he was right there, and he was all right!”

Giada took a deep breath, pausing her story, and Fabrizio just murmured some platitudes to fill the silence. He didn’t want to think too much about what he would have done in Giada’s position.

“He was all right, he told me he was sitting on the street because he couldn’t find me and he didn’t know what to do, and this man came to him to help him. He was so kind, Fabri, and I’m so happy he was there, at the right time and the right moment, willing to help Lib. We didn’t talk long, I just thanked him and then Lib and me left. But now I’m thinking, it would be nice to… I don’t know, know his name, his address, and send him some flowers as a thank you. Because only now I realize all the things that could have happened, but didn’t, because he was there and a decent man…”

Giada trailed off, and Fabrizio felt like he should say something. Something to prevent her from thinking of all the terrible possibilities that they had avoided thanks to the help of this stranger. 

"I'm glad this man was there, and that he helped Libero."

"Me too. God, Fabri, I felt like my heart had stopped and only started beating again when he appeared there holding Lib's hand. It nearly was as if his personal guardian angel had appeared."

Fabrizio had to chuckle at that - he didn't quite believe in guardian angels and the like, but nevertheless, he liked the thought that his son might have someone looking out for him, someone who would be there for him even when Fabrizio couldn't.

"Are you  _ laughing  _ at me, Fabrizio?", Giada asked, sounding amused rather than angry. And finally, this heavy note that had been in her voice ever since she started telling the story, a consequence from the day's events, had vanished.

"No, no, of course I'm not", Fabri said, relaxing on the sofa while putting his legs up and laying down.

"Had you seen him you would say this too, he even had the hair!"

"What hair?"

"Those wonderful curls, you know, like they paint the angels in church."

"Oh, okay", and Fabrizio's mind drifted away from whoever was the hero that Giada was talking about and towards a curly haired person that he might be missing more than he'd like to admit.

"-ri? Fabrizio?"

"Oh, sorry, yes, I got... rather lost in thoughts, I fear.

"It's alright, and it's late, I know. I'm just glad we could talk about this, and please, remember to have that talk with Libero. He will understand, no question there. You'll do just fine, both of you."

"Thank you Giada. Really, thanks for the call, and for-", Fabrizio stopped, unsure about how he could form his thoughts into words. How he could thank Giada for staying as calm as she had when losing Libero, for finding him again, for just being herself.

Instead, Fabrizio settled on an: "We're good parents, aren't we?"

"Yes we are", and Fabrizio could hear the smile in Giada's voice, "now sleep well Fabri, see you on  Friday !"

"Bye Giada!"

Fabrizio ended the phone call and looked at his home screen for a minute. At the picture of Libero and Anita, arm in arm, laughing about a joke he couldn't remember. And Fabrizio smiled.  Then he decided to take Giada’s advice, and go to bed. Everything else could wait till tomorrow.

And tomorrow arrived sooner than he had expected. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, it was to look for the off switch of the alarm blaring through the room. He sat up in bed a bit groggily, trying to get his bearings, trying to remember what day it was, trying to form some kind of to do list in his head.

It was Tuesday. He had to call Libero. He had to go grocery shopping and get the majority of drinks and food he would need for Anita’s birthday parties, both the one with family and close friends on Friday, and the children’s party on Saturday. He had to figure out who was going to help him, because he still was not capable of handling all those children alone… It truly was a pity Giada had to go on a work trip exactly this weekend, but it would not help him to keep thinking that. Fabrizio was well aware how hard she found it to not be there for Anita’s party. Besides the preparations for the birthday, he had to pay the bills, that was important too. He had to work a short shift in the evening. And he had to try and find Ermal.

While the rest of his tasks was straightforward and would pose no problem at all (okay, except finding someone to help him, because who was going to be foolish enough to agree to that plan?), finding Ermal was not. Fabrizio absolutely did not know where to start looking for him. Still, it should be possible, right? If they took the same bus, they would not live that far from each other. If Ermal had thought he was stalking him before, and had seen him on multiple occasions, surely he could find him again, right? Fabrizio sincerely hoped he would, and he would  _ try _ , but for now there was nothing else to do than go on with his day.

So at breakfast, he made a list of all the things he would need to buy, and looked in slight despair down at the long long list, ranging from balloons to chips, from toilet paper to dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets, and from beer to an extra packet of band-aids. He was glad this wasn’t the last day he could prepare all this, he still had some days left, but he really should get started now.

Fabrizio grabbed his wallet as well as his jacket and went outside, where he turned to the left side. Of course he also could have walked the few steps to the little grocery store around the corner, but he wasn't quite sure if he would be getting everything he needed there at one address. And yes, the fact that this way he had to take the bus also didn't hurt. So Fabrizio went towards the bus stop and sat down there, having to wait a few minutes. And while he wondered if today might be the day where he would find Ermal again, the question if the other man had taken the bus from here on Saturday flashed through his mind. Ermal had been so upset, and they had come walking from the other direction, so he wouldn't have seen the bus stop before. Fabrizio just hoped that he had googled it, or been lucky in quickly finding the place, that he had gotten home safely... 

His thoughts got interrupted by the bus' arrival, and Fabrizio went inside, greeted the driver before showing his ticket and sat down opposite from an elderly lady who smiled at him. She seemed vaguely familiar, and Fabrizio could have sworn that he had seen her on the bus before - it always was pretty much the same people here, wasn't it? Not many tourists went that far away from the city center, and most  residents  owned a car, so Fabrizio guessed that pretty much all regular bus guests had at least seen each other at some point before. He wondered how often he had walked past Ermal in the bus, unaware of the other man's attention, his thoughts. And once again, he wondered when he might find him.  _ Finally _ .

The old lady started to get up and Fabrizio helped her to step out of the bus, and then, after catching himself in letting his eyes roam twice over every person at the bus stop, he promised himself to at least stop thinking about Ermal for as long as it would take to buy everything he needed. He had a task now, one that should be able to distract him from thoughts of what might have been a friendship (what he'd like to be one).

In the grocery store, Fabrizio surprised himself by finding most things he would need faster than expected; he just needed the help of one of the shop's employees to find the special baking chocolate they would need for Anita's birthday. And still, he was finished around half an hour before he had planned to call Libero - his son still would be in school now, so no point in calling him earlier. Instead, Fabrizio decided to give himself a little break. So he carried the heavy bags filled with hopefully everything he'd need for a party that would make his daughter happy over to his favourite ice cream shop, and bought himself a cup of strawberry ice cream with chocolate splinters. And oh, this was good - Fabrizio already had thought about buying some of this ice cream on Thursday, but then decided against it, and though he saw it all in another light now, he still remembered how much his scared self had regretted not buying some of that ice cream. So he did so now. And he enjoyed every spoon of it.

Time passed slowly while Fabrizio was enjoying his ice cream as well as the gentle sunshine illuminating his face, and finally, it was the time that Libero should be home from school. So Fabrizio got out his phone and dialed the land-line of Giada's house.

“Pronto!” the familiar voice of a little girl answered.

“Hi Anita, it’s me,” Fabrizio said, smiling, “Can you please pass me on to your big brother?” 

“Yes!” Anita answered, and Fabrizio could hear her moving through Giada’s flat, while she chattered to him. “And papa, you know how many nights I still have to sleep until my birthday? Only three! Just three! I can’t wait! - Okay, here is Libero! Bye papa, I love you!” 

Before Fabrizio could say another word, he heard Libero take over the phone.

“Papa?” 

“Hi dear, how was school today?” Fabrizio asked, starting with an easy question. He was wondering what exactly he was going to tell Libero. Giada made it sound so easy when she told him to talk to Libero, that he would understand, but Fabrizio had to actually do it... Maybe he should have thought of what to say before he called Libero.

“It was okay,” Libero said, and Fabrizio knew that something was still bothering him. Usually, he would have said more, talked more, would have told Fabrizio about his day in detail. Now, there was nothing like that. 

"And your art project, how is this going?", Fabrizio tried to prompt - Giada had sent him some pictures of Libero working on it, his little face all concentrated, and he knew how much his son was enjoying this. So if this project wouldn't get Libero to share a school story, then nothing would be able to.

"Good. We've been buying some colours yest-", and then, Libero stopped himself, as if he realized which other events the mentioning of the previous day might bring into their conversation.

After a deep breath and running a hand through his hair, Fabrizio tried it again.

"You two have been shopping yesterday, right?"

"Mom talked to you", Libero said, a statement and not a question, his voice nearly a whisper, but steady.

"Yes", Fabrizio confirmed, his eyes fixing on a cat playing with a feather at the other side of the street.

"And she told you that I've been... running away?", a little less steady.

"She told me that she thinks you might have been worried about me, and that you wanted to visit me. And you know I love it every time you visit me, there's nothing that could make a day better than seeing you and your sister, but  _ please _ , never do something like this again. Tell your mom and me where you're going, don't just leave."

"I'm sorry. I didn't, I didn't want to worry mama, and I promise, I won't, I'll never run away again."

Fabrizio cursed the phone in his hand internally, cursed the cold metal that was everything he could hold onto right now, when there was nothing he wanted as much as to wrap his son into his arms.

"Shh, it's okay, passerotto, I believe you. Do you, would you like to talk about what caused you to be worried?"

There was silence in Fabrizio's ear, and he waited, his fingers drumming an unknown melody into his jeans.

"Would you tell me if something was wrong with you, if you were feeling... not well? Because I, I'm sure I could help, we could do something nice together and I'm sure you'd feel better soon -"

"Libero", Fabrizio exhaled, trying to hide how choked up his voice sounded. "I always love to do nice things with you, and I've never been more happy than I am now. I promise that I'm okay. You don't need to worry about me, I'm good. I'd never do anything that... stupid again. Can you believe me?"

"Yeah", and with a single word, Libero managed to get Fabrizio to smile for the first time during this phone call, even though it was a watery smile.

"And please know that if work wouldn't keep me from it, I'd love to spend all my evenings watching football with you."

"Okay."

"I could try again to get an evening off when the round of sixteen starts?"

"I'd like that. And before that,  _ we _ could play some football after Ani's party?"

"Of course! Your sister's already very excited, isn't she?", Fabrizio said, unsure if it was alright to change the topic yet, if there was more that Libero needed to say, needed to hear.

"Oh yeah, there's nothing else she's been talking about for  _ days _ ", and when Libero started to describe Anita's excitement in a voice that rather was fond than mocking, Fabrizio knew that they would be alright.

A few minutes later, Fabrizio could hear Giada's voice in the background.

"Did your mom just call you?"

"Yes, she said we were gonna eat. We'll see each other on Friday?"

"Indeed, we'll see each other on Friday. I love you."

"Love you too, papa."

Fabrizio hung up the call, and put his phone away with a smile. At least that was sorted. And he had his groceries, so now he could focus on the rest of his tasks. Find someone to help him with party, and find Ermal. Still, a tiny part of his mind whispered that if he could just find Ermal, both problems would be solved. 

Fabrizio  _ knew _ that the chance of finding Ermal was very small, finding him in time even more so. And then, if he’d found him, would Ermal agree to helping him? Fabrizio had said he could, if he proved himself to be trustworthy, and with what Ermal had told him, and with how their night had ended, he was pretty sure Ermal thought he was a lot of things, but trustworthy was probably not one of them.

He sighed and got up, throwing away his empty ice cream cup. He really wanted to find Ermal, but he had to admit that it was just not very realistic. Still, what he could do was take his groceries home, keeping his eyes open for those curls. What he could do, was take another walk before dinner, just around the neighbourhood. What he could do, was take the bus to work and take a good look at all other passengers. What he could do, was take a bus home after work and do exactly the same.

Again, like the day before, it didn’t work. He saw no sign of Ermal, and as he came home, turning on the lights, he had to admit it was a bit foolish. What was the chance of finding one man in the busy streets of Rome, a man that might not want to be found at all - at least, not by him? But still, the thought kept running through his mind that it had happened before, even if he hadn’t noticed it, Ermal had seen him often enough to accuse him of stalking him. That was not something you did based on two coincidental meetings, was it? So it could happen again, a foolhardy, stubborn part of him whispered.

And that’s why he spent his Wednesday in much the same way, finding excuses to walk around the neighbourhood, have a quick coffee at the cafe (though that was a stretch, really, why on earth would Ermal come back  _ here _ ?), finding more excuses to take the bus for a couple of stops… At Wednesday evening, however, coming home from another late shift at work, Fabrizio knew it was hopeless, and he should stop this. He went to bed, determined not to acknowledge the lump of disappointment settling in his stomach, but also determined to move on. Tomorrow  he would pick up Libero and Anita, at least they could fill the empty spaces in his house, the empty spaces that now only attacked him with images of that night… And then, on Friday, there would be even less empty spaces, and no time to dwell on this curly-haired almost-stranger, because that was Anita’s birthday, and he had some entertaining to do. And finally, Saturday would bring that party, that party filled with over energetic five year olds, and the biggest problem was who was going to help him keep an eye on that...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We thought we had broken the 6 Comments Curse, but seemingly, one can't fight it, as we're back to that on average. There really is something going on here.. xD  
> Still, you'd make us very happy if you would leave your thoughts in a comment!!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After days of searching, also Ermal must admit defeat and acknowledge the fact that he won't find Fabrizio again. There's nothing else to do but move on with his life...

When Ermal walked home after his music rehearsal on Wednesday evening, he once again found himself looking out for a certain man with tattoos, dark hair and, newly discovered, a gentle smile. Though this time, it was for a whole other reason than just a week prior. Where there had been confused, intimidated, scared earlier, he now was looking around rather hopeful. Where he would have given a lot only seven short days ago to be granted the wish of never having to see this man again, there now was nothing he more wished for. And yet, no matter how hard Ermal wished, no matter how much he thought of him, Fabrizio didn't magically manifest at the other side of the street. He didn't smile at him from the other end of the bus, surprised, but still with a trace of happiness… That's how Ermal imagined his face once they'd see each other again, hoped for it to be, hoped for Fabrizio to forgive him, and yet, this was all it was. A hope. One that probably would never get fulfilled, as he realized now, not in a city of three million people, three million individuals all caught up in the circles of their own lives - how could he ever hope to find him again? By now, every house seemed to look like Fabrizio's, every dark haired man looked like a promise to be broken shortly after, every jacket that could be called a questionable fashion choice had Ermal's heart beating faster for a few seconds, only to get back to its normal rhythm in disappointment shortly after.

While he let himself into his flat, Ermal shook his head. There really was no point in living in dreams, wishes, pointless hopes, especially when life itself actually was good at the moment. His day had been good, a morning shift with a majority of customers who had been at least bordering on friendly, he had finally found the time to clean up his apartment, and then their band rehearsal in the evening had been a great time. One that, to Ermal's delight, was just like the week prior, or the one before that. It felt like coming come, to walk into the cold little room they rented from Marco's aunt to make their music there, and it felt like it did just every week when they started playing. Even after how well things had gone on Sunday with Marco and Andrea, there still had been a voice lingering in his subconsciousness, whispering that somehow, his behavior, his honesty then, would cause things to  _ change _ . Only that it hadn't. He was playing with his friends, like always, made fun of the colour of Marco's new guitar, complimented the cookies that Dino had baked, tried a song as a duet with Andrea, had a beer with his friends afterwards - it had been another one in a long row of Wednesday evenings, and that was a wonderful thing.

So he resolved to also spend the rest of his night in a nice way. With a glance at the clock, he debated whether it was too late to call his grandmother, it was high time to do that. It would have to wait for another day, though, as he didn’t want to risk waking her up. Instead, he called Sabina, chatted a bit with her, asking about her week, about the children.

It was a pleasant conversation, and a nice, calm end of a good day. Only that one thing kept running through his mind - but no. He was not going to think about it anymore. It was done, gone, past. He was going to focus on other things. On the future. He was going to focus on living his life and on not getting stuck in the past. 

And he was going to start that by going to bed. Sleep was good, they said, right? Ermal brushed his teeth, then changed his clothes and got under the covers. He read one more chapter of his book, and then turned off the bedside light.

The next morning he slept in. He could, so why not? When he finally got up, the weather was nice enough to have his breakfast on the little balcony. As he drank his coffee, he smiled to himself. Life was good. He was happy.

Today had a few tasks that needed to be completed, but it wasn’t so much as to hurry through it. Instead, Ermal took his time, lazing around the house, tidying a bit, cleaning a little. Finally, it was time to go outside. First a quick trip to the hairdresser’s, his curls were getting annoyingly long, and he needed to stop by the music store to buy a new set of strings for his guitar. Last night, one of Marco’s strings had broken, and Ermal had given him the spare ones he had with him, but he really should get new replacements immediately, before the next accident happened. And then his standard Thursday evening shift at work later.

Ermal made his way through the streets, trying with all his might to ignore those thoughts that kept popping up, that whisper that told him to look twice at that guy passing by, that sweet suggestion of taking the bus, or the long way around… But no. He was not going to give into these thoughts. Not today. Not tomorrow. He was ready to move on, put it behind him.

So Ermal made his way through the streets, eyes straight forward, doing his best not to focus too much on the other people. He wouldn't find Fabrizio, and that was that. Nothing to be done about it. And he tried his best to ignore the wave of sadness that swept through his heart at the thought.

Once he arrived at the hairdresser's, Ermal got asked for when his appointment was scheduled, and oh, he didn't have one? The young lady behind the counter rummaged through a big leather bound book, and then looked at Ermal, or rather his curls, a little pitiful. She then told him that sadly, they couldn't make time today, but he could sign an appointment for Friday? Ermal added a smile to his nod and told her his name so she could put it into the book, and he didn't mind too much, because what was one more day? It was not like his hair already had gotten so long that he couldn't see anymore, that only happened on rare occasions when one of his longest curls positioned itself directly in front of his eyes, and even then, they could be blown away. The situation certainly wasn't as dramatic as the pity in the girl's eyes had indicated, and Ermal was sure they'd seen cases way more drastic than him.

Next, Ermal went to the music store, had a little chat with Claudio who was working there and told him about a gig his band would be playing, one that Ermal promised to try to make time for, and once he left the place with his new guitar strings in a little bag, he found himself with more time than anticipated. He had planned around an hour and a half for the hairdresser, unsure if he'd have to wait there, and so it still was some time until he had to be at work. But that shouldn't be a problem. 

Ermal skipped a few songs on his phone until his ears got filled with an old favourite, the melody reminding him of past times, laughs that he had shared with his friends, tasting of carefreeness, and it was a little challenge to not sing along here in public. While Ermal at least was drumming his fingers along to the beat, he crossed the street, and found himself in front of a little park.

He could walk through there, maybe pause a while on a bench, enjoying the sunshine and the happiness of the people around him. Not to look at them, he promised himself, he was not going to do that - it would only leave him disappointed afterwards, and that was not the point, not on a day like this. He would observe, but not search. He would enjoy, not obsess. And he would do that by enjoying the sounds in the park too, where the city seemed suddenly so far away, no matter how small it was. The song finished, he took his earbuds out again.

Then Ermal entered the gates, and started the walk along the small path leading slightly downhill towards a pond where some ducks floated around. There was a young couple picnicking in the shade of a tree, there were some children playing. A woman with a little boy was feeding the ducks, and Ermal looked on amused as the child laughed and squealed in joy when some of the birds got closer. When suddenly one of them was brave and bold and extended its neck to pick at the bread he was holding, the little boy got scared and ran to hide in his mother’s arms.

Ermal remembered the simple joy of this, of taking Sabina to the park when she was young, to do exactly this, remembered her hiding in his arms when the ducks or pigeons got too close, scaring her. 

Suddenly he was roused out of his thoughts by an object speeding closer to him. It was a small toy baby stroller, that had gained speed on the hill and was now rolling to an inevitable stop in the pond - inevitable, except for Ermal. Much in a reflex he managed to catch it before it did, with a thought flashing through his head how he had suddenly become a rescuer of toys threatening to disappear in water.

Before he had quite grasped what exactly was happening, another object came hurtling down the hill, on a course to follow the stroller. Ermal’s other arm shot out, and got a hold of this too, right on the bank before it would have hit the water - though it turned out not to be an object at all, but a little girl.

Ermal made sure that toy stroller was not moving, and then crouched down next to the girl, a hand on her arm to keep her safe from the water. He looked at her, wanting to ask her if she was alright, but the words didn’t quite come. Because his mind was stuck on a thought, this girl looked familiar. She reminded him of someone, and this realization was followed by a lot of mental cursing that kept him occupied. Because this little girl reminded him of Fabrizio. It was something in the shape of her face, her eyes… He  _ knew _ it couldn’t be, and he  _ knew _ he had promised himself not to  _ obsess,  _ to let it go, to let  _ Fabrizio  _ go. Yet, here he were, still seeing this man everywhere, even in the faces of little girls. It had to stop. This was becoming unhealthy.

Still, all that could wait, because right now, this little girl deserved his attention.  She looked at him with wide eyes and then turned her attention towards the toy stroller that Ermal still held safely with his other hand. After a look inside, she fixed her attention on Ermal again, and suddenly, he found himself being hugged by a pair of tiny arms, the little girl pressing her face into his chest. Her chaotic hair was tickling the skin at Ermal's chin, and he had to laugh.

"You've saved Annalisa!", the girl exclaimed in joy once she had released him from the hug, and smiled at Ermal with a prominent gap between her teeth. "I don't think she can swim too well, so you've really saved her - you're a hero! Thank you, sir."

"It was an honor to be allowed to help your Annalisa", Ermal answered, and leaned to the side to have a look at the inside of the stroller.

What Ermal had expected, judged by the pink stroller itself as well as by the name Annalisa, had been a doll, pretty, long hair to braid, glittery dresses to make any little girl dream. But that was not at all what he was looking at now. Because inside, there was a... dragon? No, Ermal realized, no wings to be seen. A dinosaur then. In light blue, with large eyes, crowned by what might be enormous orange eyebrows, with teeth of white plush sticking out of its mouth.

"This is Annalisa?", Ermal asked, pointing towards the dinosaur.

"Yes!", the little girl confirmed, and happily picked the dinosaur out of the stroller. "She's a carnotaurus! They lived in Argentina, or, no, where that is today, and they've been soooo big!", and she spread her arms as wide as she could, to indicate just how big the carnotauri had been.

Ermal smiled at that, and just was about to ask her if she knew any more interesting things about Annalisa and her  fellow species . But then, all words, all questions died on his tongue. Because he had looked away from the little girl for a moment, and his gaze landed on a pair of shoes. Shoes that he knew. Shoes that he knew, because he had been tying their laces, crouching down nearly like he was doing right now. Shoes that belonged to no one but Fabrizio, he was almost sure of that. 

With wide eyes, Ermal looked up, still expecting to be proven wrong, but no. He saw tight jeans, a dark shirt with not all buttons closed, and then, finally,  _ finally _ a face. A face he had been looking for. A face he had been dreaming of. A face he hadn't expected to see ever again, and yet he had been hoping, never stopped wishing. Fabrizio's face,  looking as good as it had at the weekend, his dark eyes widened i n surprise.

Ermal got up slowly, staring, staring still. Words didn’t come to him, no matter how often he had rehearsed the speech he would give when he would find Fabrizio again. Maybe it was that deep inside he just hadn’t expected it to happen, maybe it was the suddenness of the moment, maybe it was just Fabrizio.

Fabrizio also was still standing there, staring back at him, face unchanged. It was him, though, who rediscovered the ability to speak first. Maybe he just wasn’t quite as overwhelmed by the situation as Ermal was, or maybe he just had a few seconds longer to process it. He could have stood there for a little while already, seeing that Anita was safe, saved by this man - this man he knew, this man that left his flat in such a hurry, this man that hurt him so badly. Would it make up for it, Ermal wondered, him saving Anita from falling into the water, for what he’d done to Fabrizio? 

“Anita, why don’t you show Annalisa those flowers over there, next to the path?” Fabrizio suggested, not taking his eyes of Ermal. Anita nodded, and skipped happily over to the flowers, flowers that happened to have the exact same colour as those eyebrow-like things on the stuffed animal’s face. 

Alone now, or at least, no longer watched by a curious little girl, the two men continued to stare at each other. Ermal wondered if Fabrizio would say anything to him, but even more than that he wondered what Fabrizio would say. So many scenarios had passed his mind that now he had no idea what might really happen, and it wasn’t helped by the fact that he didn’t actually know Fabrizio that well.

“Ermal,” Fabrizio finally said, though it was barely more than an exhalation. He did a step forward, but then stopped again, falling silent once more.

“F-Fabrizio, hi,” Ermal managed to choke out, and immediately berated himself for it mentally, because wasn’t that about the lamest thing he could say - and he had so much more important things to tell Fabrizio, now that he had finally found him. What if he was ruining this one chance he had now to make things better?

Fabrizio’s eyes fell down to Ermal’s feet for a second, moved up again to land on Ermal’s hand still on Anita’s stroller, but finally settled on his eyes again, some intense emotion hiding in their depths.

“I’ve been looking for you, you know,” he said, voice steadier than before. Somehow, that also gave Ermal the courage to try his voice again, and make the first of confessions he wanted to tell Fabrizio.

“I’ve also been looking for you. A lot.” He followed it with a tiny smile, no more than a shaky lift of the corners of his lips, but Fabrizio recognized it, and answered it. He did another step forward, closer to Ermal.

“I - Can I hug you?”

The question stayed between them, not answered right away. Fabrizio didn't take it back, didn't apologize for the suggestion, he just kept looking into Ermal's eyes. Waiting, granting him time, allowing Ermal to come to the conclusion himself if he wanted this or not. And oh, did he want this. Wanted to hug Fabrizio, be hugged by him, and feel just as safe as he had the first time he had felt those arms around him. And maybe, just maybe, he could. So Ermal took a tiny step of his own towards Fabrizio, who slightly opened his arms. An invitation.

Ermal closed his eyes and stepped into Fabrizio's arms, into his embrace, into this underlying tingling feeling of something like protection. Fabrizio's arms found their way around Ermal, holding him, tight, steady, and when Fabrizio spoke, somewhere close to Ermal's ear, he could hear the smile in the older man's voice.

"I am so glad we found each other again."

Ermal's own smile got swallowed by the fabric of Fabrizio's jacket covering his shoulder, but once they broke apart (too early, so very much too early, if you asked Ermal, who found that Fabrizio's arms around him felt even better and more comforting than they had whenever he tried to remember during the past days, because now, they were a reality), he  _ showed _ Fabrizio the smile. Heartfelt, sincere, bright.

"Me too. I, I tried to find your house again, but I got a little lost on the way I fear, and I couldn't quite remember your address, or where exactly you lived. And for once I didn't see you on any bus rides", Ermal explained, carefully trying to let a hint of humor slip into his words towards the end.

And Fabrizio laughed. "Yes, I see that - you weren't in any of my busses either."

The information that he might have taken one or seven more bus rides than would have been necessary during the past days, he kept to himself. For now.

They still were standing quite close to each other, and Fabrizio raised his hand, softly touching Ermal's cheek. The younger man tried to not lean into the touch too much, to see it as something casually, and to focus on Fabrizio's words exclusively.

"Are you alright, Ermal? I got worried about you, on Saturday, when you- did you make it home safely?"

"Of course, yes. And I'm sorry. No, let me finish - I shouldn't have just left like that, but I... I couldn't. It was too much, and I just had to get away, and I regretted it, so much, and-", Ermal trailed off, because all the well formulated sentences he had prepared seemed to be dancing tango in his head, and the intense look from Fabrizio's dark eyes took away his ability to think of new ones that would make much sense.

Before Fabrizio could answer, Ermal caught his hand, that had dropped from his cheek towards his shoulder, a steady presence, just like at their walk back from the Cafe, and he looked at it. At how the bruises around his wrist had fainted; visible still, but not much. Noticed how Fabrizio didn't flinch away from his gentle touch.

“I told you it would be fine,” Fabrizio said softly, after letting Ermal examine his wrist for a little while. He made no move to withdraw his hand from Ermal’s grasp, and as Ermal slowly lowered their hands, he fought the urge to intertwine their fingers. He shouldn’t. Clearly, touching Fabrizio was not a problem, but there was a line between friendly and flirting and romantic, and he shouldn't cross that.

So with all the strength he had, he dropped Fabrizio’s, slowly, regretfully. 

“Yes, you’re right. Still - seeing what I did… I…”

“Ermal, please,” Fabrizio interrupted him quickly, putting his hands up again, landing gently on Ermal’s shoulders, as if he was afraid that if he didn’t, Ermal would run off again, and disappear into the world, not to be seen ever again. “Let it go. I know you meant no harm. Let’s forget it, okay? Let’s move on. Let’s focus on us having found each other again, yes?”

He looked at Ermal, with a gaze that was intense enough to lift Ermal’s and lock their gazes together. Ermal could do nothing else but nod, with a look like that there was absolutely no way he could disagree, there were no reasons left that made any sense. Fabrizio nodded back at him, and then said, “Are you… are you busy now? We can go have a drink somewhere maybe?”

That question brought Ermal back to the present. His day. His list of things to accomplish, and most importantly, work soon. His boss wouldn’t like it if he was late again… If only he didn’t have to work now, he would like to do nothing more than stay with Fabrizio. Because if they parted ways now, would they really find each other again? He should take this chance, he shouldn’t let Fabrizio walk away. But he had to.

“I… I have to work. I’m sorry. Maybe some other time? I mean that,” Ermal answered, trying to ignore how Fabrizio’s face fell at that. Still, he nodded, understanding as always.

“Of course, I understand. Wait, can I give you my phone number? Then we won’t have this problem again and we don’t have to take buses for no reason...”

Before Fabrizio had even finished that sentence, Ermal had basically pushed his phone into Fabrizio’s hands.

“Please!”

Fabrizio took it, smiling, and put his number in. When he was finished, he called it so he would have Ermal’s number too, and then handed it back. Just as Ermal took it, Fabrizio paused and tugged it back towards him a little.

“Wait! I have something to ask you!”

Ermal looked at him, wonder in his eyes, waiting for that question, watching as Fabrizio started blushing slightly.

“I told you about this party for Anita,” he said, tilting his head towards his daughter, still playing with her dinosaur among the flowers. “Would you maybe - only if you have time and actually  _ want _ to, help me with that?”

All this time, Fabrizio had seemed so confident, taking the lead in the conversation, but now he seemed actually shy, as if his question was too much to ask.

“Of course, I’d love to!” Ermal answered, a bit too quick maybe, and maybe he hadn’t really thought of what it actually meant to look after a class of five year olds with just one other adult, because he would not say no to spending more time with Fabrizio, no matter the circumstances. 

“Really?” Fabrizio asked, “It’s fine if you don’t want to, this is not about, you know, when we met.”

“No, it’s fine, I’d like to help you!” It would be fine, he was good with children, he could manage them for an afternoon. And if not, he would still be glad for his answer, because the smile Fabrizio sent him was worth anything.

“Great! Thank you! Truly! Um, I know you have to go soon, so maybe we can meet… tomorrow? Yes, actually, tomorrow would be perfect. You see, it’s Anita’s birthday then, why don’t you come to that? Then you can already meet her - I mean for more than just saving her from an impromptu swim - Thank you for that! I don’t think I said that yet, but thank you so much!”

Ermal had to smile at the waterfall of words coming from Fabrizio now.

“It wasn’t a problem at all, I just happened to be here at the right time, anyone would have done the same. Thank you so much for the invitation, that sounds great! What time?”

“At four? If that works for you?”

Ermal nodded, he only had to work earlier in the day, and then his appointment at the hairdresser was at two, so four o’clock would be fine.

“I’ll text you the address! Okay, we won’t take up much more of your time, just let me get Anita to quickly meet you and thank you,” Fabrizio said, adding to his daughter, “Anita, can you come over, please?”

Anita skipped back over to them, putting Annalisa back in her stroller. Fabrizio introduced them, and asked Anita to thank Ermal, which she did very nicely. Then they continued their walk, while Ermal hurried to get to work, a smile on his face. Even his boss’ annoyed comments on him being late once more couldn’t hurt him. He had found Fabrizio again, and no one could take that away from him, not with that phone number saved in his phone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks once again for reading, and we'd be very happy if you'd left a comment! And if you like our writing style, maybe also check out our single fics, Poste Italiane and Blood Red Christmas Stars?


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Today is the day! It's Anita's birthday! And that means family time. And maybe a special guest will come to say hello?

Fabrizio awoke early the next morning. Of course he did, with an over-excited now finally six-year-old jumping on his bed to wake him.

“Papa, papa, it’s my birthday, I am big now!” she exclaimed, her shrill voice ringing in Fabrizio’s ears. He winced just a little, because that was just a bit much after a slightly too short night, first thing in the morning. 

Of course, that was completely his own fault. He could have gone to sleep at a reasonable time, but instead he had spent the evening staring into space, thinking only of Ermal. He had found him again! He was looking good, not so terribly upset as that last Saturday. He was going to help with the party! He was already coming by on Anita’s birthday just tomorrow - now today! Ermal would be here today! He would see him again!

Before he knew it, hours had passed, and he just remembered in time that he had to put on the garlands and balloons for Anita’s birthday. So by the time he had finished that, it was really rather late. At least he fell asleep with a smile - he had found Ermal.

Still, his lack of sleep wasn’t Anita’s fault, not in the least, so he hugged her close.

“Happy birthday,  _ topolina _ , you're my biggest girl now!”

He kissed her cheeks, and then pulled her down. 

“Can’t I sleep a little bit longer? It’s early, love,” he still tried, knowing full well that it wouldn’t work. It never did, let alone today.

And indeed.

“No! It’s my birthday! You can’t  _ sleep _ ! It’s important, come  _ on _ !”

Fabrizio, knowing a lost fight when he saw one, let her drag him out of bed and towards the living room. In the doorway she suddenly stopped, and stared, mouth open and eyes wide.

“Oh, papa, look, it’s all so pretty, is that for me?”

Fabrizio did look, and saw the old garlands he put up yesterday, a bit lopsided, a bit wrinkled from having been stored in a drawer for months, but all that didn’t matter to Anita.

“Of course, it’s your special day!” He lifted her and carried her through to the kitchen. “Now what do you want for breakfast?”

"Hmm, I want scrambled eggs. Or a cake. Or both!", Anita exclaimed with a smile, and Fabrizio laughed.

"How about I make us some eggs now, and we'll have that cake in the afternoon? You know how your uncle is way better at baking than me."

While he said that, Fabrizio picked Anita up, so she could sit on the kitchen counter and watch him cook. And his little girl was not so successfully trying to suppress a giggle, which he understood very well - that one time he had tried to bake muffins with her had turned out rather disastrous, though until this day, Fabrizio couldn't have said  _ what _ exactly went wrong there, he had just been following the instructions after all? But somehow baking and him seemed to not be made to go well together, and as Filippo did have a talent there, as well as the dedication to always come up with the most extraordinarily decorated and amazingly tasting cakes for his niece and nephew, Fabrizio was happy to leave this task to his brother.

Fabrizio was just adding some salt to their eggs and listening to Anita tell a story about how Annalisa had been the very first one to congratulate her for her birthday when Libero walked into the kitchen. He yawned, and Fabrizio smiled. When he and Anita had picked up Libero the previous evening after spending a whole day of playing football with his friends, he already had basically been asleep on his legs, and back at their flat, Fabrizio had just carried him to his bed where he had drifted off into the land of dreams in less than a minute. And seemingly, even a good night's sleep hadn't been quite enough to fight the exhaustion from a whole day of playing outside in the fresh air; chasing a ball, a goal, a dream. Though when Libero's eyes landed on his little sister, he seemed way more awake immediately.

Libero walked over to the kitchen counter and his sister grinned down at him.

"See, I'm bigger than you now!"

"Oh I see that you are", Libero admitted with an answering grin, while his sister hopped down from the counter.

Libero wrapped his arms around Anita, holding her close, and then swung her around a little, her feet losing contact with the ground for a moment. She squealed, and Libero softly put her down again, still hugging her.

Fabrizio heard his son whisper a happy birthday, and then he did his best to only focus on the sounds of the eggs getting fried in his pan, because this was a private moment between his children, one he didn't wanna invade, didn't wanna eavesdrop on.

A moment later, Libero appeared next to Fabrizio and wished him a good morning, receiving a ruffling of his already chaotic hair in return.

"Libero, think you maybe could get dressed before your mom gets here?", Fabrizio asked, and Libero looked at the oversized AS Roma shirt he slept in, then at his dad, and at the shirt again, with his eyes screaming betrayal.

"Please? You'll have to change later anyways, you know we're going out for lunch."

"Yes! We're going to the place with the moving plates!", Anita chimed in in excitement.

Libero nodded, though he didn't seem too convinced that the nice Chinese restaurant that his sister fancied so much called for another dress code than his favourite football shirt. And before there could be more talking about that topic, the doorbell rang.

“Oh, that’s for me!” Anita said then excitedly, and ran to the intercom. She couldn’t quite reach it though, and threw a look at Fabrizio, as if it was his fault that it was too high on the wall. Libero came to her rescue though, and handed her the receiver.

“Hello?” Anita asked all seriously, and then giggled, “Hi mama, we’ll open the door!”

She grinned and nodded at Libero, who pushed the button. Then she ran to the door to wait on the landing for her mom. Fabrizio had to focus on the eggs, they were almost done and it would do no good to ruin them now, but after a few minutes he could slide them on the plates and turn his attention to the scene behind him. He shared a smile with Giada, who had put her coat on the rack in the hallway, revealing a white dress with green polka dots, and was making her way to the kitchen with a present in her arms. Anita looked at it, but didn’t say anything, she knew it was breakfast first and presents after.

They ate their breakfast, the four of them, though Giada only had coffee. They chatted and laughed, and though Fabrizio knew that splitting up with Giada had been a good decision, a wise decision, a mutually agreed upon decision, rare mornings like this made him realize how much he missed having someone around. Someone to share jokes with, share pride about the children with, someone to share  _ moments _ with.

He didn’t get too long to dwell on it, though, because soon they had finished eating. Anita, usually the one the others had to wait for, now had her plate empty before anyone else. She was excited to see her presents, and finally she could open them. 

First, she took Fabrizio’s package, a soft, lumpy form wrapped in paper with little stars on it. Carefully, she opened it where it was taped shut to tear as little of the paper as possible. As she unwrapped her gift, and a green fabric showed itself, her eyes started to sparkle. Finally, she clutched a green teddy bear to her chest, looking up with a lovely smile and bright eyes at Fabrizio.

“Thank you papa, I love him so much!”

Anita pressed the bear’s paw, and a “Howdy mate!” sounded through the kitchen in a deep voice. Anita started giggling, and ran up to Fabrizio, hugging him.

“He is beautiful!” she breathed, looking down on the bear again. Fabrizio looked at her, his heart warm. He had known she would like the bear, but to see her so  _ happy _ , that meant a lot. Especially because he remembered a night where he thought he would never see this. He meant every word he had said to Ermal, the night had been forgiven, but that didn’t take away that those thoughts had crossed his mind.

Anita had moved on to Giada’s present, another soft, lumpy form, this time wrapped in paper with purple and white stripes. Another green fabric was revealed, but of a different shade than the teddy bear had been, and also it came with white dots. Anita took it up and let gravity unfold it. She was left with a dress much like Giada’s, except in her own size and with the colours switched.

“Mama, it’s so pretty!” she exclaimed, “Can I wear it today?”

Giada nodded, smiling, “Of course, dear, I’ll help you change. But first there’s someone else who would like to give you something.”

Libero came up to his sister then, carrying two small packages. He handed her the first.

“Be careful, it can break,” he warned, and Anita went about unpacking it very seriously.

When the paper was gone, she held in her hands a mug that had her name on it, and two little stick figures playing on a grassy field with a sun in the sky.

“I painted it! Look, it’s us!” Libero said proudly.

“I see, it’s so cool, thank you!” Anita said, hugging her brother carefully and keeping a steady hand on the mug.

“And then this,” Libero said, handing her the other package, that Anita unwrapped quickly.

“It’s a little bow?” she asked, examining the white fabric with green dots she held in her hands.

“Annalisa also has to match you and mama, no?” Libero answered, smiling.

Anita looked up with an answering smile, “Yes, she would! It’s amazing! We’ll all look so beautiful!”

Giada and Anita then disappeared to her bedroom to change Anita into her dress, and she clutched her new teddy close to her, because he had to be introduced to all her other friends, and not in the least to Annalisa, who got her new bow tied around her neck as well. 

Fabrizio sent Libero a look until the boy remembered their previous conversation, and also got up to get changed. Fabrizio quickly did the dishes and tried to prepare as well as he could for the party later. There wouldn’t be much time when they would get home from lunch and when the guests would arrive, so better do it now.

Giada joined him in the kitchen and helped him.

“But Fabri, honestly, what were the children wearing when I came in?!” she said, laughing at the memory.

“Yeah, I asked Libero to change before you would arrive but then you were early-”

“Not Libero! Well, less Libero, that was just a bit too informal - I’m talking about Anita! It’s a good thing I gave her that dress! Did you pick her outfit?”

“What? No, she did. She did a good job though, didn’t she? All was perfectly fine for the weather outside!” Fabrizio said, quickly rinsing some glasses so they would be clean for later.

Giada just laughed.

“Of course she did!”

At that, Fabrizio looked up at her, and he felt he should be offended, but he wasn’t, not with the atmosphere around them so full of fun and happiness.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He asked, a teasing note in his voice.

"Oh nothing, nothing at all", Giada answered, amusement lighting up her face, "I really shouldn't be surprised, she's her father's daughter after all."

Fabrizio raised an eyebrow and was just about to ask if this once again was about the jacket he had worn for their first anniversary, the one that Giada somehow could never get over even though it had been so many years ago, and Fabri had never seen her point; but just when he opened his mouth to ask, Libero and Anita stepped back into the kitchen.

Anita looked lovely in the new dress, and when Fabrizio told her that, she smiled brightly at him, and then turned around quickly where she stood, making her dress swirl around her. Libero, who now was wearing jeans and a blue sweater, also smiled at his sister being so happy, and then went over to Fabrizio, asked him to please borrow his phone and snapped a picture of Anita and her mom, arm in arm in their matching outfits. Fabrizio then took his phone back, told Libero to stand with them, and took another picture showing the three of them, all laughing into the camera.

"Wait papa, we need another pic, don't put your phone away yet, we're missing someone!"

"Of course princess, do you want Annalisa to be in your pic?"

Anita looked at him in confusion.

"No? I mean yes, now that you say it-", and she quickly ran the few steps to get the plush carnotaurus as well as the new teddy, clutching one with each arm close to her body, "but mainly, I want  _ you _ in the picture too!"

Fabrizio swallowed and walked over to them, sharing a quick but so heartfelt smile with Giada, and then he took a selfie of the four of them. Or he rather tried - it proved to be difficult enough to fit four people into one selfie, but the importance of two stuffed animals being in focus didn't make it easier, so in the end, Libero ended up with the tail of a dinosaur in his face, and the only parts of Fabrizio that weren't hidden behind the green teddy bear were his eyes and his hair. But nevertheless, it was a lovely picture, and all of them were smiling brightly - especially Fabrizio, and his lips might have been hidden, but you could see it in his eyes.

After Anita's critical gaze had looked at the picture and decided that it was acceptable, they all put their jackets on and drove a few minutes in Giada's car. On the radio, they played Bon Jovi, and Fabrizio was delighted to hear both of his kids singing along full volume from the backseat while Giada smiled at the traffic and he himself was singing the loudest. The song then ended, and Giada asked Fabrizio if his sister would be able to make it to their party later, since it had been unsure for some time if Romina would have to work.

"She'll be there, she luckily could switch her shift."

"Wonderful, I haven't seen her in way too long! So it will be the whole family there, how wonderful."

Fabrizio smiled at that, and then thought of something. How it wouldn't be only their family, but also a special guest at the party. He of course couldn't know how long Ermal would stay, if he'd just say hello to Anita and then leave again or if he'd have the time to stay for a cup of coffee, a piece of cake even; it was a Friday after all, he couldn't know if the other man had plans on how to continue the day. But nevertheless, he would be there, and Giada would meet him. Now probably would be the perfect moment to tell her about this, that he'd invited someone new to their little celebration, but how to do this? He surely wouldn't just tell her the whole story of how they had met, and her curious questions that certainly would come, with those he could deal later. After the party. Yes, it was wiser to just keep it to himself that Ermal would come by, at least for now. And wasn't that also nicer for Anita, that the visit of the nice man who had saved Annalisa would be a surprise? Yes, it would be, absolutely, and so, Fabrizio just stayed silent. Though he didn't try to hide his smile - it was his little darling's birthday, and he was spending it with the people he loved, there was every reason to smile here. Giada didn't necessarily have to know that maybe, just maybe, this smile also was partly caused by the thought of Fabrizio being able to see a certain someone again later.

And he kept smiling, all through lunch, but this time he didn’t even need to think of Ermal at all to make that so. Libero was telling jokes, while Anita was chattering about each plate that came by. She wanted to have as many green plates as she could, just to fit with the theme of her presents, even though she didn’t like all the dishes. Luckily, Giada and Fabrizio did, so they swapped their food with Anita. 

Nothing quite topped the moment, though, when it was time for their dessert. Libero saw it first, and tapped his sister’s arm until he had her attention and then pointed excitedly at the upcoming plates. Anita looked up too, and froze, eyes wide, reflecting the sparkler that came closer, stuck in a cupcake. Fabrizio took it and put it in front of Anita, and then started singing her a birthday song. Giada and Libero joined in, and they also got a cupcake, though without the sparkler. That was only for the birthday girl.

When they finished, Anita had the widest smile on her face, and Fabrizio glanced at Giada, who met his gaze and returned his own smile. Their little girl was happy, so happy, and that was all they ever wanted.

Now they were on the way back home, and slowly Anita was getting excited about the rest of the day.

“And everyone will be coming? Aunt Romina and uncle Filippo?And -”

“Yes, dear, everyone is coming especially for you,” Fabrizio interrupted her laughing, as he turned in the seat to ruffle through her hair, before she could list every single person she knew. 

And that comment also brought Ermal back on his mind. Just a few hours, and he would see Ermal again. And he could introduce him to the people closest to him, and then at least Ermal would no longer only exist in his own mind. He hoped everyone would like him, he hoped Anita would like him - but she probably would, saving Annalisa meant he would for ever be on her list of amazing people.

“We’re here. Fabrizio, aren’t you coming?”

He looked up, to find Giada already half out of the car, staring at him with a curious expression on her face.

“Yes, yes, I am!”

Quickly, he scrambled up, and made it into the house, evading all of Giada’s looks. He checked the time instead, and there was still some time to go before it would be four o’clock, but he knew his parents would no doubt be early, they usually were.

And of course this time wasn't an exception - it wasn't too long after three when the doorbell rang, and once again, it was Anita who let the guests in with excitement brightening her eyes. Both Fabrizio's parents hugged their granddaughter tight and kissed her, accompanied by Fabri's dad joking that she was getting so big, he soon wouldn't be able to pick her up anymore. Anita looked at her grandpa with wide eyes at that, and despite the truth that certainly was swinging with her words, he did pick her up, ignoring his wife mumbling something about his back, and carried the little girl over to the sofa, where he sat her down with a huff and then got introduced to the new teddy bear.

"And what's your name?", he asked while softly shaking the bear's paw.

Anita looked at the stuffed animal considering, while her grandpa unknowingly pressed down at the paw.

"Howdy mate!", sounded through the whole flat, and both Fabrizio and Giada, who were busy preparing tea and coffee in the kitchen, had to laugh.

"The first time this wakes me up at three in the morning I'll call you right in the moment to curse you", Giada hissed, and Fabrizio had to laugh even harder, though he knew how serious she was here.

After a moment, Libero and his grandma came back from his room, where the boy had wanted to show her something he prepared for school, and Anita jumped over to her brother.

"Libero! You have to say hello to Michele!"

"Who's Michele?", Libero asked, looking around as if some unexpected party guest would jump out from behind the sofa at every moment; as if a new face would join this little celebration of theirs, someone he'd need to be introduced to. Well, not yet.

Anita looked at her brother as if he was a little slow, and then pointed towards the green teddy bear sitting next to her grandpa. Libero chuckled as realization set in, and walked over to the sofa.

"Howdy Michele", he said, nearly managing to stay serious throughout the two words, and while Anita introduced the newly named Michele to the other people present, the doorbell rang again.

Fabrizio opened the door this time, quickly hugged Giada's sister and then held it wide open for Filippo, who carried a massive cake in his hands. He smiled at Fabri and Giada quickly lit the candles, all of this having gone unnoticed by Anita. Her grandparents had managed to keep her busy until now, but when Fabrizio exchanged a look with his mom over Ani's shoulder and nodded, the little girl's head softly got turned by wrinkled fingers, and her mouth dropped open when she spotted the cake.

Filippo really had been overdoing himself - the cake was light blue, decorated by glittering flowers and various dinosaurs in bright orange, and the six candles, shining brightly especially when Giada's sister dimmed the light, were striped in all colours of the rainbow. Once again, they sang a birthday song, and then Fabrizio wasn't the only person in the room to exhale in relief when Filippo had managed to balance the cake safely in the middle of the table.

"Oh I'm so sorry I'm late, but the traffic, you can't believe-", it suddenly sounded from the still open door, and Fabrizio turned around to see his sister standing there, a little out of breath. He smiled at her and took her jacket, while his family exchanged hugs everywhere around, and then, he realized something.

Romina had apologized for being late. With a swallow, Fabrizio looked over towards the clock decorated with little hearts at the kitchen wall, and saw that it already was ten minutes after four o'clock. Which meant that Romina wasn't the only person to be late. But he was sure that there was a very simple explanation for why Ermal was not here yet, there had to be. And Fabrizio was convinced that the other man would arrive soon. At least that was what he told himself, while he put on a smile and watched Anita blow out the candles on her cake. And he knew that it wasn't his time to make a wish, but if he hoped that a hint of that birthday candle magic would help to let a certain person appear soon, it certainly couldn't hurt. And he wouldn't share this wish with anyone, because he really wanted it to come true; wanted to wrap Ermal into his arms again, wanted to know him to be alright, wanted to introduce him and his bewitching smiles to the people he loved...

“Here, Fabri, a piece of cake,” Giada said, shaking him from his thoughts and handing him a little plate. He waited until all had a piece, and then took a bite. Yes, there was a very easy explanation Ermal wasn’t here yet, traffic was terrible, as Romina had said, or maybe he had miscalculated the time it would take to get to Fabrizio’s place, there was a very simple reason, and of course it wasn’t that he didn’t  _ want _ to come.

After the cake, they moved on to the presents from the new visitors. Romina handed a beaming Anita a package, that she quickly unwrapped, to reveal a new backpack.

“Oh, it’s pretty! Look, papa!” Anita showed him the bag, but never released her grip on it. It was hers, now. Fabrizio admired it, and immediately recognized his sister’s work in it. No one else would have a backpack like this one, that was for sure. He nodded a grateful smile in Romina’s direction, appreciating the effort she put in.

Next up was Giada’s sister, who gave Anita one of those magic drawing boards with different colours she had been asking for. She looked at it with wide eyes, clearly happily surprised and impatient to start drawing. Giada helped her open the package and sat down next to her.

Fabrizio looked on, before his attention was captured by his mother.

“Fabrizio, dear, our present is more a present for all of you. We know how hard you’ve been working these past few months, and we know how much Anita loves dinosaurs, and surely Libero will enjoy himself too.”

“What are you talking about?” Fabrizio asked, not understanding a single thing right now.

“We’re giving the three of you, you and the children, a holiday to Puglia. Say a week or so, it’s beautiful near Bari, and there’s a dinosaur park, and so many other things to do, I’m sure you’ll enjoy yourself!”

Fabrizio only stared at her, needing a moment to let this sink in. He wanted to tell his mother that that was too much, they couldn’t just give them a  _ holiday _ , but before he could, Anita jumped into his lap to show him the drawing she made, and his mother only smiled and went over to chat to Libero. He’d have to talk to her later, it could wait a little.

Anita scrambled off again, and he found himself talking to his siblings for a while, before his eyes landed on the clock again, and his mind filled with worry. Ermal was still not here, and it was past four thirty now. He excused himself and went outside for a smoke, fiddling with his phone, a phone that showed no notifications whatsoever, no explanations, no texts, no calls. Fabrizio hesitated for a moment, but then decided he should call Ermal. Just to check if all was well, if he was still coming. 

As he listened to the tone, waiting for Ermal to pick up, he couldn’t help but wonder why. Yesterday had seemed so perfect, when they saw each other again, and it hadn’t seemed as if Ermal was only accepting the invitation out of politeness, it had seemed like he really wanted to come. So why wasn’t he here?

The tone went on and on, until finally a robotic voice told Fabrizio that the person he wanted to speak was not picking up. He lowered his phone, and stared at the screen in slight disbelief. Well, that was as clear a sign as any, wasn’t it? If someone did not come to visit and did not pick up his phone either, they just did not care to be in contact. He didn’t know where it had gone wrong, what had changed, but he should stop thinking Ermal would come. It was a good thing he hadn’t told anyone, at least now he didn’t have to answer any questions from his family. He just had to pretend everything was okay, and it would be. It was his little girl’s birthday, she deserved a happy father there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally a new chapter, we hope you enjoy it! Please leave a comment, and maybe even a DM, that would be great! Also, it's been four months since we first had this idea, isn't that crazy? And at this rate it doesn't seem like we'll be done in the next four... 
> 
> And about Anita's nickname, _topolina means “little mouse” and is also what Mickey Mouse is called in Italy._


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party continues, and Fabrizio is trying very hard to have a nice time. Maybe the doorbell will give him what he wants?

"Is everything alright?", Giada asked a few minutes after that futile phone call, and Fabrizio looked at her.

Everyone else was busy - a delighted Anita had found a card game inside the leather backpack that Romina had made her, which the two of them now tried out with Libero and Fabrizio's dad; Filippo and Giada's sister were preparing a salad for dinner and Fabrizio's mom did the dishes at the moment. Fabrizio had actually wanted to go help her, but before he could get up from the table, Giada's question reached his ears.

Fabrizio nodded, but didn't bother to actually let a lie slip past his lips. He was aware that Giada would see through it anyways; they knew each other too well for a simple  _ yes  _ to weigh stronger than the defeated look that surely could be found in Fabrizio's eyes. With a sigh, he ran a hand through his hair, and spared another look at the clock. A little past five. Oh well.

Giada's eyes had followed Fabrizio's glance, and there were questions lingering behind her dark red lips, but she didn't ask them. She just got up, rested a hand at Fabri's shoulder for a second and then got towards the sofa, to ask Anita if she was winning the new card game - of course she was, the little girl exclaimed happily, and after a thumbs up for his daughter, Fabrizio joined his mother in the kitchen. He got himself a towel and started cleaning the dishes, feeling his mom's eyes on him. 

"If we want to get this done before dinner, you better should start now", the older woman said into the silence, and Fabrizio thought he could hear the hint of a smile in her voice. 

"Mom?", he asked, not quite sure what she meant. 

"You're going to tell me that this holiday is too much, I'm going to say that it's our pleasure and that the children deserve it, that  _ you _ deserve it, we'll repeat this a few times cause we're both rather strong-headed, and in the end it will lead nowhere. I've known you quite a few years,  Patatino , and I've seen how you looked at us earlier. But it's alright, okay? It really is. So I don't want to hear any more of it, at least not until it is about planning this holiday. Did we understand each other?"

Fabrizio chuckled, and just opened his mouth, answering the smile that his mom smiled towards the dishes with one of his own, when once again at this day, the doorbell rang.

Fabrizio froze for a second, but then dropped his towel and hastened to the hallway. He felt his mother's eyes on his back, and he knew there was another person who was wondering about his behaviour. With a hand on Libero's shoulder, who had taken the intercom, Fabrizio stood there waiting for the door to open and reveal their visitor. Would it be Ermal? An hour late was not so very late, was it? Better late than never... It would be so nice to see him again, to introduce him to everyone - all those thoughts that Fabrizio had promised himself he would forget were back.

They were back, only to disappear once more in a pang of disappointment that almost physically hurt, when not those curls appeared in the doorway, but rather Roberto's bald head hidden by a funky hat. 

Fabrizio sighed. He should have known already when Libero picked up the intercom, he wouldn't have let in a stranger without asking. Of course it wasn't Ermal.

Fabrizio returned Roberto's greeting halfheartedly, which earned him yet another questioning look, and yet another person wondering what was going on with him, and that was something he didn't need. There was no need for people to worry about him. There was no reason to tell anyone this entire story when he would not see Ermal again anyway.

Roberto had moved on to greet the birthday girl and the rest of the family, while Fabrizio watched from the sidelines, leaning against the wall. He wanted to be a part of this, he knew he should be a part of this, but he just needed a little moment for himself. He watched as Anita opened her present, revealing a little black guitar covered in white stars. Despite himself, Fabrizio smiled. That was something she definitely liked, and something he and Giada would no doubt quickly tire of. Still, right now he didn't want to have to be that person that had to play a happy song on the guitar, trying it out. There were enough people in the room capable of that, and all of them in a better mood than him.

So Fabrizio grabbed his cigarettes and a coat, and made his way outside for a short smoke break. He wouldn't be gone long, just a little while to pull himself back together and present a proud, happy father at his daughter's birthday when he went back into the flat. He wouldn't be caught up in his own silly hopes and dreams anymore after this.

He leaned against the wall, the stones cold behind his back. He lit his cigarette, took a drag and also leaned his head against the wall, eyes closed, trying to relax, forcing himself to relax - though he should know that that never worked so well. Still, he tried, and slowly it actually seemed to work. At least, until he was suddenly shaken from his thoughts.

"Fabrizio?" it sounded a bit breathlessly.

Fabrizio froze, at first not daring to open his eyes. When he finally did, he found exactly the person he had thought that voice belonged to, exactly the person he had been hoping to see all day. Ermal.

"I am  _ so _ ,  _ so  _ sorry I am late."

None other than Ermal stood right in front of him, an apologetic look at his face, but once Fabrizio smiled at him, it made room for a little smile of his own. He walked another step closer towards Fabrizio, just a little one, and was that...? A look for confirmation into Ermal's eyes, and then Fabrizio was sure, that the other man was going for a hug here. So Fabrizio leaned in, slowly, and wrapped his arms around Ermal's leanframe. Ermal hugged him back, his hair brushing against Fabrizio's face, and once they parted from their hug, Fabrizio's eyes got drawn to those curls.

"You did something to your hair", he said, not quite a question, because he could see that the curls were a little shorter.

"Yes", Ermal confirmed, and unconsciously reached a hand up to run it through said curls, "I was at the hairdresser earlier. Do- do you like it?"

"Oh, yes, I do, it suits you."

Looking into each other's eyes proved to be rather hard suddenly, and Ermal's eyes caught on the cigarette package in Fabrizio's hand.

"Could I get one of those too?"

"Sure, of course", and Fabrizio hurried to shake a cigarette out of the package and handed it to Ermal, who placed it between his lips, and then looked at Fabrizio.

The lighter must be coming towards its death, or maybe the wind was rather strong, causing Fabrizio's hand to shake - it took him a moment to light the cigarette between Ermal's lips, but finally, he managed, and the younger man took a drag while leaning against the wall next to Fabrizio. Actually, Fabrizio wanted to light himself another cigarette too, but when he looked into the package he noticed that it was empty. Hm, he thought about that for a moment, sparing a side glance at Ermal. It was not as if Fabrizio had never shared a cigarette with a friend, this was a rather normal thing to do, but someone, here it wasn't so easy. So Fabrizio put the empty package into his coat pocket, and looked at Ermal's hair again. Maybe he had been late because he was at the hairdresser? But then again, why would he go there especially, when he was just going towards their party? Or was it just a coincidence? As if Fabrizio was thinking loud enough for Ermal to hear his thoughts, he brought up the topic of his timing himself.

"I'm really sorry for being late, I totally lost track of the time while being in that shopping center earlier."

"It's all fine, I mean you're here now", Fabrizio reassured him with a smile - there was no reason to share just how bad he had felt earlier, and how he had assumed Ermal would never want to talk a word with him again. All that mattered was that he was there, there with Fabrizio.

"What did you get at the shopping centre?", Fabrizio asked, hoping for a safer topic.

"Don't you want to let yourself be surprised along with Anita?"

"Wh- What?", Fabrizio raised an eyebrow in confusion, and the playful look that had been there at Ermal's face just a moment ago dropped.

"Sorry, she's your daughter, it's just normal if you want to know what other people are giving her, especially if you don't really know them-", Ermal mumbled, and finally, it clicked for Fabrizio.

"Did you, am I getting this right, you got Anita a present?”

"Yes? It's her birthday after all."

There was such a nonchalance in Ermal's voice, as if it was the most logical thing to do in the world, and Fabrizio couldn't help it, to wrap his arms around his friend once again.

Ermal took a slow second to respond, returning the hug, but it was clear he was only humouring him, because when they broke apart, he just stared at Fabrizio.

"What was that for?" he asked, the wonder clear in his voice.

"I... I hadn't expected you to bring her a present, that's all," Fabrizio mumbled, though maybe, part of his reaction was just happiness to see Ermal here, and to have that possibility at all, of pulling him in for a hug. But he should really keep a check on himself, they were just friends, and there was no reason to touch Ermal all the time, even though Fabrizio wouldn't mind that, wouldn't mind that at all.

"But you invited me to her birthday, of course I have brought something. It's just, I didn't quite know what to get her and then time went by much faster than I thought. And also, I know it sounds like a shit excuse, but the traffic was awful. I'm sorry, I really wanted to be on time."

Fabrizio could hear the sincerity in Ermal's voice, and believed him - besides, if he didn't want to come he wouldn't be here at all.

Ermal had finished his cigarette, and then Fabrizio caught his eye, smiling.

"Ready to go upstairs?"

Ermal nodded, but made no move yet to enter the building.

"So, is it a large party? That you're not missed at all?"

"It's just family and close friends. Mostly family really, come on, it will be fine!"

Finally, Ermal followed Fabrizio, who started a short description of all the guests and their relation to him. He hoped it would make Ermal feel a little more prepared to walk into his flat.

However, before they could quite make it there, they were met halfway up a flight of stairs by a familiar person.

"Fabri, there you are, I was just going to look for you, you worried me a bit, you know - oh who's this?"

"Giada! This is Ermal -"

"Wait, I can't believe it! How did you find him, Fabri?"

Fabrizio paused, confused, wondering what Giada was talking about, and how on earth she knew Ermal. He looked at Ermal, in a search for answers, but Ermal only stared at Giada, and it told him only that there was something going on, because it wasn't a stare like 'who is this crazy woman who implies she knows me' but rather the incredulous stare of seeing someone when you thought you never would again. Was there some history between Ermal and Giada? Fabrizio didn't want to believe that. Surely that wasn't true?

In Fabrizio's confusion, Giada took the lead.

"I'm so happy to see you again! I really can't believe it, but come in, please come in!"

She steered Ermal towards the kitchen, that was now empty of other guests. Fabrizio followed them, mindlessly, lost in thoughts that spiraled to more and more unlikely scenarios - unlikely, but possible.

Giada offered Ermal something to drink, and Fabrizio used the time to come back to himself and observe the two a little. As far as he could tell, Giada and Ermal weren't very close, and he surely had never heard Giada talk about him before. But maybe it was a recent thing? Finally, he couldn't stand the endless thoughts rolling through his mind like waves.

"So... How do you know each other?" he asked after some trouble locating his voice.

Giada chuckled.

"Well, we don't, really. God, I didn't even introduce myself. I'm Giada," she said, shaking Ermal's hand.

Fabrizio stared some more, his confusion even bigger than before.

"But... How-"

"Ermal," Giada continued, letting the unfamiliar name run over her tongue, "is the one who found Libero, you know, earlier this week."

Fabrizio turned to Ermal, who had started to blush.

"I didn't know they were-"

Fabrizio interrupted him, "Thank you Ermal, really," and smiled at him. So Ermal was the curly-haired stranger Giada had been talking about!

"And you? How do you know each other?" Giada now asked, curious, her eyes fixed on Fabrizio, and he swallowed, knowing she had connected the dots with Ermal's arrival and his earlier behaviour.

"Well, um," he started, feeling a blush creep on his face, and avoiding any looks at Ermal, though he could see from the corners of his eyes that he had taken a sudden interest in the glass in his hands.

"We happen to take the same bus sometimes, and we just... started talking?" He cursed himself for the questioning tone, this was doing nothing to lessen Giada's curiousity, so he hastened on. "And yesterday he saved Annalisa and Anita from a swim in the pond in the park. So then I invited him today, as a thank you."

Giada met his eyes for a couple of uncomfortable seconds, but then decided to let it go - for now, no doubt he would have to deal with her questions later.

Ermal still was staring into his glass of Fanta as if it was the most fascinating sight he ever had encountered, and Fabrizio decided that it might be nice to distract him by introducing him to the other guests. He looked towards the living room and just was about to raise his voice to call his daughter, when the girl chose right this moment to look in their direction. Her eyes turned wide, and faster than one would expect based on the length of her little legs, she had sprinted towards them, coming to a stop in front of Ermal with a bright smile.

"Hello!", she greeted him in excitement, and Ermal crouched down towards his knees in front of her.

"Hello Anita. A little bird told me it might be someone's birthday today?"

Anita nodded, and motioned for Ermal to lean closer, before she whispered: "It's mine!", as if that was a secret.

Ermal played along, faking a surprised look which made the little girl giggle, and once a smile had taken over his face again, he wished her a happy birthday. Anita smiled, and then looked at Ermal, as if she was waiting for something. It took him a moment, but then he slightly opened his arms, and she jumped into them for a hug - Ermal held her close, his smile turning even gentler, and he was so focused on what the girl in his arms told him that he didn't notice the look with which Fabrizio watched them. Or the curious glances of the other party guests, that by now all had noticed that a new guest had arrived, a new addition to their so well known circle of people, and pretty much all of them wondered who this man being hugged so enthusiastically by Anita might be, and if he had come here to stay.

"- and he talks like a real cowboy!", was what Anita said when Ermal let her go again, and he laughed at that, before opening his backpack.

"I can't wait to meet him. But first-", he threw a quick glance towards Fabrizio, who just smiled, and then reached into the backpack, "Here's a little present for our birthday girl."

With that, he handed Anita a box wrapped neatly into colourful paper, and Fabrizio couldn't quite make out what that pattern was from where he was standing, but it turned out he didn't need to.

"This looks like a little yellow argentinosaurus! And a blue one! Ahh, they are so cute!", and Anita looked at the paper in fascination.

"I've heard they lived not so far away from where your Annalisa's fellow species did", Ermal said, and Anita nodded enthusiastically.

Then she carefully opened the paper, and shortly after the box it had contained. Her eyes turned wide before she thanked Ermal in the most delighted voice, and Fabrizio took a step closer, to see what Ermal had bought her. Inside the present, a pair of rollerskates was visible, purple with green wheels, and Anita already was busy with taking off her home socks as if she'd want to start skating right away. Giada helped her to try on the skates, which turned out to fit perfectly, while Ermal took the few steps to stand next to Fabrizio.

"Thank you, so much, this wasn't-", Fabrizio started, thinking of how expensive those skates might have been, but doing so with a smile, to not give Ermal the impression that he wouldn't appreciate it.

"It absolutely was", Ermal just answered, his eyes fixed on Anita who now stood on the skates, tightly grasping both of Giada's hands.

Mother and daughter then agreed that they best would be further tried out in the outside, and while they took off the skates again, Libero had walked up to Ermal. He greeted him, a little bit shy, and then started to talk.

"It's really nice to see you again, but I wasn't aware that you know my sister."

"He was the one who saved Annalisa from drowning!", Anita explained, who had wandered over towards them and now smiled at her brother, the gap between her front teeth on bright display.

"You seem to be good at saving the ones who got a little lost", Libero said in a low voice, and before Ermal could react further to that statement than to swallow, Romina joined their little circle and demanded their attention.

"Don't you want to introduce me to your friend, fratellino?"

Fabrizio then told her, his parents and the other guests Ermal's name, the younger man shook a lot of hands, exchanged smiles, answered questions, and when Fabrizio got the impression that Ermal's conversation about the traffic with his dad had come to a stop, he asked him if he wanted to join him in the kitchen.

Once it was just the two of them, Fabrizio nervously chuckled, as if to say something like "they're quite a lot, aren't they?", but Ermal seemingly saw it differently.

"You've got a lovely family."

"I do, I really am lucky. And so glad you're here as well."

Ermal just smiled a small smile at that, but then changed the topic to a efficient “Can I help with anything?”

Fabrizio was torn for a second between telling him that he was a guest, that he should go enjoy himself, that Fabrizio could handle dinner on his own, and protecting Ermal from his family in the living room. Fabrizio had seen the looks that had been exchanged, the sly glances a Ermal, at him, and he didn’t think it would be a good idea to let Ermal alone with them unprepared like this.

“Sure, there’s a salad in the fridge, could you finish that with a dressing?” Fabrizio asked, as he got out the steaks and other ingredients he needed. Ermal went over to the fridge too, getting out the things Fabrizio pointed at, and set to work.

"How long can you stay today? You'll join us for dinner at least, right?" Fabrizio asked softly, hoping Ermal would, but he hadn't quite forgotten his previous disappointment yet, and if he was honest, the depth of that sudden feeling had scared him a little.

"Of course - if that's alright, I don't want to impose..." Ermal mumbled, rummaging through a drawer to look for the salad cutlery.

Fabrizio only nodded, muttering something in response that of course Ermal was welcome. He didn't really know how to behave now that Ermal was finally here, among his family, no longer his alone - but then, wasn't that exactly what he wanted?

They finished the dinner, with some help from Giada, and Fabrizio made sure to keep Ermal next to him at the table. At least everyone accepted the story of how they met, not paying any attention to the details of that, but rather focusing on Ermal's saving of both Libero and Anita.

Still, Fabrizio noticed his mother's eyes on the both of them in turns, quickly followed by his sister's, who had also noticed it. He knew a blush was creeping up his neck, though there was no reason to. They were friends.

Dinner passed by slowly and comfortably, with a lot of talking and laughing. Fabrizio was glad to see that Ermal was a part of the group, open and smiling. This was such a change from the last time he had visited.

After dessert, Anita got up to show him her other presents and Ermal admired them dutifully with the little girl leaning against his knee. Fabrizio couldn't help himself, he had to stare, until finally he could tear himself loose from that view, clear his throat and take a sip of his drink. As he did so, he happened to meet Giada's eyes, and he didn't quite like the look in her eyes, that look that tried to imply something, something that of course wasn't true.

Finally, Roberto checked his watch and announced that he unfortunately had to go already. He said goodbye and left, only to be not much later followed by Fabrizio's parents who wanted to get home not too late. The rest cleared the table and moved to the living room again, where Giada also told them she had to leave to finish packing for her trip. Her sister was going to go with her, to help with that.

That left just Ermal, who had been roped into playing with Anita and Libero, sitting on the floor with a game between them, and Filippo and Romina.

Romina surveyed the scene for a bit, and when her gaze fell back on Fabrizio, she nodded decisively.

"Come on, Flip, it's time to go."

Filippo looked at her a bit surprised.

"Isn't it quite early still?"

"No, no, it isn't, it's terribly late. Come."

Fabrizio knew from her tone of voice that there was no point in arguing with her, that would only make her more stubborn, and louder, and possibly alert Ermal to her ideas. He shouldn't risk that. So he just let them out, saying goodbye at the door.

Filippo tried one more time, "But why can't we stay?" with a confused expression on his face.

Romina looked at him as if he was a bit slow, and then just pulled him onwards.

“Bye, Fabri,  _ have fun! _ ” she yelled across her shoulder, and Fabrizio sighed as he closed the door. She had read this totally wrong, but still he needed a short minute to just gather his thoughts and focus on what was really happening. He heard Anita’s laugh rise up through his flat, followed by a low chuckle. That was what was happening. Ermal was here. And Ermal would be here tomorrow.

Fabrizio smiled, and made his way over to the living room again, joining his children and Ermal, watching the game go on. When it was finished (Anita won), the children scrambled off to find another game, and Ermal looked at Fabrizio.

“I can’t stay too long, I’m sorry”

“No, no, that’s okay, I understand. I’m so happy you could make it at all!”

The two men stared at each other for a moment, still sitting there on the floor.

“I, um… About tomorrow,” Fabrizio managed, finally, “I’d planned to go to the park, pack food and drinks for the children, some games, and just let them run wild until they’re tired.”

Ermal nodded, “Sounds good. I think the weather will be good too, tomorrow, so it should be fine. What time do you want me to be here? Should I bring anything?”

“I have everything sorted. The children will come at two o’clock, so what if you get here around twelve? Or one? Would that work?” Fabrizio asked, wondering if this was too much, of course it would make perfect sense if Ermal also arrived at two, there was nothing for them to do for two hours… But he would like to see Ermal again, just the two of them, without his nosy family around.

To his relief, Ermal just nodded, and pushed himself up.

“Great, I’ll be here. And I’ll be on time tomorrow!” He smiled a soft smile that told Fabrizio that he was a bit embarrassed about it, and then stuck out his hand. 

Fabrizio stared at it for a short second, and then realized Ermal was trying to help him up. He grabbed the hand and got up, underestimating slightly Ermal’s strength (stupid, he remembered very well how strong Ermal was) and ended up with his other hand on Ermal’s shoulder to keep himself balanced.

He felt his blush come back, and quickly released Ermal, clasping his hands together behind his back. 

“I’ll just - go find the children and say goodbye,” Ermal said, a bit hastily if Fabrizio wasn’t mistaken, and then stalked of. Fabrizio watched him go, slightly shaking his head. Really, what his family had been hinting at would never happen, especially Romina was just delusional. He and Ermal were friends, and that little fact filled his heart with joy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! As always, we would love to hear your thoughts on this, we're having a lot of fun writing this together, but we are really curious what you think of it, and we would really love to read your comments as a little reward for finishing a chapter! :)


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A long awaited birthday party is finally happening... And the kids aren't the only ones having a lot of fun there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're back with another chapter, and we hope you enjoy! :)
> 
> Funfact, completely unrelated to the chapter or the story, Julia is making me tell you this, did you know Jesus is actually a stork? We found that out last weekend.

It was a quarter to twelve, and Ermal knew he was too early. In fact, he had just walked around the block once already, trying to be a bit less early, but it had just cost him maybe five minutes. He stared at the doorbell again, wondering if he could already press that button.

As he dawdled there on the sidewalk, an elderly lady passed him by, and Ermal imagined she was sending him some doubtful looks, because he recognized her, he had overtaken her on the detour he just made. And now he was here, suspiciously inspecting this building. Would she think he was trying to see what his chances were of a successful break-in?

He awkwardly shuffled his feet, then did the only thing he could do, and rang that bell. He waited for a few seconds, and soon, Fabrizio’s voice sounded through the static crackle.

“It’s me, Ermal,” Ermal said a bit helplessly, and before he could say anything else, apologize for how early he was (really, why couldn’t he just be on time for once?), the door already started buzzing as a sign it was open.

He pushed through it, straightening his jacket before scaling the first set of stairs. If they were lucky, the day would be a nice one, warming up so that that jacket wouldn’t be necessary anymore later. 

He had reached Fabrizio’s landing, where he was already standing in the door opening.

“Hi, come in!” he said simply, and Ermal did. He put his jacket on the coat hanger and then followed Fabrizio into the kitchen. With a nod, he accepted the coffee he was offered, and then they stood there in silence. It was somehow strange to be back here, with just the two of them, no one else to distract them, no one to keep his thoughts from returning to that night a week ago… Ermal couldn’t help but wonder how the past week might have been if they’d parted on better terms, if he hadn’t run out…

Wait - just the two of them?

“Where are Anita and Libero?” he asked Fabrizio, looking through the room as if they were hidden somewhere.

“Anita had a sudden craving for gummy bears, so I let them go to the store to get some,” Fabrizio explained with a chuckle. “They should be back in a minute.”

Ermal nodded.

“So, what still needs to be done? How can I help you?”

Fabrizio opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, they were interrupted by the sound of Ermal’s ring tone.

“I’m sorry, I’ll just quickly - “ Ermal said, and answered it, all the while wondering why, he didn’t expect any phone calls, and now it just seemed as if he didn’t want to be here, like he was busy had other things to do…

“Hey Ermal, I had a question - or a proposal, rather,” Andrea’s voice sounded in his ear, and Ermal knew he had to interrupt him quickly. Usually Andrea’s proposed schemes were fun, but he always got carried away in plans, and the descriptions took ages.

“Hi Andrea. I’d love to hear it, but not now, okay?”

“What are you up to?” Andrea asked, casually, though that had been the question Ermal had been dreading a little.

“I’m with Fabrizio all day today,” he said hoping to match Andrea’s casual tone, but with the look that he could see Fabrizio sending him from the corner of his eye, he hadn’t really succeeded. 

“Fabrizio?  _ The  _ Fabrizio? So… You found him? Did you talk? You’re okay?”

Ermal looked at his feet now, and mumbled quickly, “I did, we did. Yes, I’m good, I’m great, really. I would tell you if anything happened. Now, I really have to go, I’ll talk to you later!” He ended the call, and cleared his throat a bit awkwardly.

“That was just a friend, I’m sorry about that, now, what can I do?” he tried to get back to business, but Fabrizio wasn’t having it. He stared at Ermal with a slight smile on his face, a smile that Ermal wasn’t sure he liked.

“You told your friends about me? Did you tell them how we met?” There was a tone in his voice that hinted at amusement, at a challenge, and Ermal had no idea how to answer this. No idea, but his tongue betrayed him, and the words, “I did,” slipped off of it. Immediately, Fabrizio’s smile turned into a smirk, and Ermal felt a blush creep up on his cheeks.

“I can explain!” he tried to save himself, too late realizing that that explanations would probably only make it worse.

"Oh can you now?", Fabrizio asked, still smirking, and Ermal couldn't help but shake his head, hiding a smile of his own.

What a fascinating thing it was, that now, after just a week, he was able to laugh together with Fabrizio, see the circumstances under which their lives had collided as nearly a funny encounter, and not something to break his heart, not anymore. It probably had something to do with this feeling of calmness he experienced around Fabrizio, this impression that it nearly felt as if they had known each other for longer already. And Ermal found himself wondering if Fabrizio might have told anyone about this night - yesterday, at the party, there had been some funny gazes at them, but they rather were of a curious nature, asking who this new... friend? (Could he call himself that? The thought of being Fabrizio's friend caused Ermal's smile to turn yet a bit brighter) might be. They weren't the looks you'd send someone you'd think to be crazy, for attacking someone you knew to be a wonderful human being. So no, at least towards the people at the party, Fabrizio probably hadn't mentioned it. And Ermal suspected that this was a good thing, in the sense of how nice the last evening had been.

They had spend a minute or two just looking at each other, smiling, lost in thoughts, and then, as if breaking a spell, Fabrizio cleared his throat, and suggested that they might wait for the children in the living room. Ermal joined him there and picked up the remote control laying at the table, mindlessly skipping through the channels until Fabrizio suddenly suggested to stop. He had to get one number back, to see what had caught the other man's interest, and saw a beautiful snow landscape. A narrator talked about the loneliness of Siberian winters, joined by some soft cello notes, and Ermal glanced to the side, to see Fabrizio staring at the screen in fascination. Ermal smiled; relaxing into the moment, the calmness, the company.

After a few more shots of the white endlessness, a scene with some ravens got shown, playing in the snow, rolling around, and when one of them managed to land on his back, feet sticking up into the air, it seemed as if the others were laughing about him. Or with him. Ermal heard Fabrizio giggle at the adorable sight of the raven getting back up and joining his friends in their game again, and they still were jumping around, enjoying life and the carefreeness the snow provided them with for now, when the sound of a key turning was heard from towards the door, and Libero and Anita stepped into the flat.

Both kids brightly smiled at Ermal and came towards the sofa for a hug, which Ermal gently offered, and while Libero went towards his room, Anita sat down at the arm rest next to Fabrizio. She leaned over her papa, looking at Ermal, and extended her hand.

"Ermal? You want some gummy bears?", she asked, and then, after Ermal smiled and what seemed to be a second of consideration, "You can even have some green ones."

"Thank you", Ermal answered, and then picked out a green gummy bear as well as two yellow ones.

For that, he too had to lean a little over Fabrizio. His shoulder brushed the other man's chest, and, when he sat back into the sofa cushions, Ermal suspected that his curls might have touched Fabrizio's face. Though the other man didn't mention it, and so Ermal didn't either.

They ate some more gummy bears, heard a story about a family of wolves living in Siberia, and when Libero came back after a few minutes, Fabrizio suggested that they could have lunch. After a light carrot soup, he asked his kids to please have a look at everything they had packed for their trip to the park, and turned towards Ermal.

"The weather really is good outside, I hope it will stay like that. And I've packed a lot of food, and some games, my camera, band aids, a list with the numbers of the other kids' parents-"

"Hey", Ermal softly stopped Fabrizio, who had started to talk faster and faster, "It sounds like you're really well prepared. And we got this, it will be a great party. Okay?"

"Okay", Fabrizio answered, a smile highlighting his features.

Not long after that, the doorbell rang, and the first of Anita's friends arrived, a little boy called Gianluca. They hugged while Fabrizio greeted his mom who dropped him off, and then he introduced Ermal, as a friend who would help with the party. Ermal shook the mom's hand, and after a little more smalltalk and an agreement to when to pick her son up again, she left, with a wink towards Fabrizio.

Anita and Gianluca barely had started explaining some shenanigans going on in their class to Libero when the doorbell rang again, and not too long after, Ermal got the impression that the whole flat was filled with over excited little kids.

It took a bit longer, and some more children, until Fabrizio did a final count and then let his eyes find Ermal to signal they were complete and could go. For a brief second, a thought flashed across Ermal’s mind, that wondered what the hell he had gotten himself into. This were a lot of very energetic children. He watched as Fabrizio tried to get the attention of all the children running around the room. 

It turned out to be surprisingly easy though, to get all of them to calm down a little and get ready to go out. This wasn’t because of Fabrizio per se, he tried a few times to get their attention, but it didn’t really work as well as he planned. No, the real force behind this sudden efficiency was Anita herself, who climbed on a chair and clapped her hands until all children (and adults for that matter) were silent and looking at her.

“Now we go to the park!” she announced, and then jumped down again to get her shoes and coat, the other children following her example. 

Fabrizio flashed a smile at Ermal. “That was easier than I thought,” he said, while also getting his shoes and handing Ermal his jacket. They both took up the bags they had filled with all the things they might need, including the gummy bears, and then made their way downstairs, making sure all the party guests stayed close to them.

Luckily, the park was closeby, and they only needed to cross a street twice. Ermal and Fabrizio fell into a natural division of tasks, Fabrizio leading the way, and Ermal in the back to make sure no one lagged behind. 

Soon they reached the park, and found a nice spot to unfold their blankets and set up their camp for the day. Ermal had to admit he was glad he could put the bags down, because even though the way was not long, the bags had grown heavier and heavier with each step. 

He helped Fabrizio spread out the last blanket they had brought, and then looked up at him, smiling. 

“Do you want to unpack all the food already?”

“Hm, no, I’m sure the everyone has just had lunch before coming, so I guess we could start with some games. The drinks might be good though, we don’t want anyone fainting from dehydration!”

Ermal nodded, and rummaged through the bags to find the drinks and plastic cups. Fabrizio started looking for the things they would need for the games. Both of them emerged victorious from the bags, grinning at each other and holding up the items they were looking for. 

Fabrizio then wanted to turn to the children, tell them about the games they had planned, get them excited for the first one, but as he looked around, he noticed that the children were amusing themselves already, running after each other on the grass, laughing as they went.

“Oh,” he managed only, and then looked at Ermal a little lost. 

Ermal couldn’t help but chuckle at that, put down the drinks on one of the blankets and then took all the things Fabrizio had in his hands to put them down too.

“Let them run, they will come to us when they’re bored, or hungry, or thirsty. Come on, the first part of hard work is done, getting them here, we deserve some rest now!” he said, and sat down, impulsively grabbing Fabrizio’s hand to tug him down too.

Fabrizio sat down next to Ermal, his thumb thereby softly brushing over the back of the latter's hand, and after he had made himself comfortable at the blanket, it took him a second to release Ermal's hand. He quickly busied his own by grabbing two of the colourful bamboo cups he had brought, and asked Ermal in a playful tone what he'd like to drink. The answer, Fanta, didn't surprise him, Fabrizio realized as he filled a cup for Ermal and handed it to him with a smile, and wasn't that a sign that they started to actually get to know each other?

They actually were becoming friends; an impression that only increased when Fabrizio felt a tiny object collide with his face a moment later. Ermal was looking sheepishly into the distance, towards the playing children, but the opened package of smarties next to his leg gave him away, and before Ermal would get the chance to snip more smarties at him, Fabrizio took revenge, carefully aiming so the grape he threw landed at Ermal's cheek. For a second, Ermal looked at him wide eyed, and then he burst into laughter; Fabrizio laughing along, even though a little less with his whole body than Ermal did.

"What's so funny here? Have you been telling jokes?", the two man heard a voice from above them, where Anita stood with a curious expression on her face.

"Ohh, can you tell us a joke?", one of Anita's friends, a little girl with short blond hair, chimed in, and Ermal looked at Fabrizio a little lost.

"You happen to know any jokes, Fabri?"

"I, I fear I can't think of one right now", Fabrizio said, nearly stumbling over the words, "How about you?"

"No, not really, at least nothing that would be fitting here."

"Oh  _ really _ ?", and now, there was something curious in Fabrizio's deep voice, something that might be bordering on suggestive.

"Not like that", Ermal said while shaking his head, and though the younger man rolled his eyes, Fabrizio was able to spot the hint of a blush blossoming on his pale cheeks.

"Earth to papà?"

Fabrizio quickly looked back up towards Anita, who seemed a little impatient now, with her adorably raised eyebrows, and he rather quickly started thinking about party activities than the fact that the light rose colour on Ermal's cheeks might have looked a little captivating.

"Would you and your friends like to play a game now, princess?"

"Yes! Can we play freezing music? Pretty please?"

"Of course", Fabrizio answered, getting up from the blanket with a smile.

Ermal followed his example, and watched how Fabrizio fished his phone out of his pocket, while Anita gathered her friends together to explain the game. After a moment of difficulty, in which it seemed as if the phone's display wasn't quite cooperating, Fabrizio managed to start a song, told the kids with a smile in his voice that they'd start now, and turned the volume up.

While the voice of Jon Bon Jovi started sounding through the park, the children danced around, some to the rhythm of the song, some to their own, and the sounds of music were joined by those of carefree laughing at some of the dance moves the kids came up with. Then, in the middle of the chorus, Fabrizio stopped the music, and everybody had to freeze, which most of the kids did instantly, not even blinking an eye anymore. One of the boys though, who had been standing on one foot only when the signal to stop moving appeared, tried to hold his balance with no success, and it looked nearly like slow motion as he fell towards the grass, catching himself with his hands, and once he started laughing about the situation together with his friends, Ermal could hear Fabrizio exhale in relief. The older man still insisted on checking if the boy hadn't hurt himself, hadn’t scraped his hands open, which he luckily hadn't, and when they continued the game with a U2 song, he was sitting under a tree and cheering at his friends.

There only were three kids who had managed to totally freeze every time, Anita one of them, when Ermal turned to Fabrizio with a smile, to talk about a pattern he had noticed.

"You've made some nice music choices there."

"Oh no, that's all Anita's favorites, she made me a whole playlist for this!"

"Good taste then; I wonder from whom she's got that", and there was a glint in Ermal's eyes when he said that, one that Fabrizio didn’t quite know how to interpret.

Ermal watched as it seemed as if Fabrizio suddenly didn’t quite want to meet his eyes, but turned back to his phone. They had a game to finish, after all.

In the end, it was a little girl with two cute braids who won, the braids softly swinging along her face were the only parts of her body not frozen. Anita squealed and hugged her, she knew it had been a risky choice to start some hopping dance to the music, and indeed she hadn’t been able to keep her balance.

“What’s up next, birthday girl?” Fabrizio asked her, with a smile, keeping an eye on the other children so he wouldn’t lose any of them.

“I’m thirsty, can we have a drink? And maybe something to eat now. And then we can play another game!”

Fabrizio just nodded smiling, looking around for all the supplies they had brought with them and that he needed now. Ermal was one step ahead of him, though, having already grabbed the cups and drinks they had put out of the bags, and started handing them out for the children. He felt Fabrizio’s eyes on him for a second, before he heard him rummage through the bags for some snacks.

They sat there, all of them, on the blankets, drinking their drinks and eating their food. Ermal was enjoying himself. This wasn’t how he had imagined he would spend his weekend, and if you would have suggested it to him just a few weeks ago, that he would spend the afternoon with two dozen children and a man he, despite how well they clicked, barely knew, he would have laughed in your face. And yet, here he was, with exactly that, and enjoying himself.

He handed out drinks and snacks, he got back empty cups and wrappers. He dug through the bags to look for the skipping rope that Fabrizio assured him was packed somewhere. He found it, but by then the children asking for it had already found something else to play with.

He sat back down on the blanket, looking at the rope in his hands, but looked up again when he heard Fabrizio’s chuckle.

“You look so disappointed right now. Did you want to show off your skills? If you want to, we can tie it to a tree and I can turn it for you.”

Ermal could literally hear the smile on his face so he threw the rope in Fabrizio’s general direction before letting himself fall back on the blanket, crushing a bag with… well, something, in his path.

“Shut up.”

Fabrizio started dragging some bags to the side to make a space for himself to lie down too. Ermal wanted to tell him he shouldn’t, that it was a bad idea to lie back in the first place - they had children to look after, and they weren’t flying in the sky - but he couldn’t fight the part of his mind that told him it would be  _ nice _ to have Fabrizio next to him like that, with the blue sky dotted with white clouds above them, the sounds of the park around them, and he would only have to turn his head to look into his face and be able to count the freckles there…

Once more, though, there was a child running back to them to ask something. Ermal had not managed to remember any of their names. Was this Alessio? Luca? Enrico? He didn’t have a clue. He sat up though, ready to help.

The kid explained that they wanted to play football, but were lacking a goalkeeper, and he looked at Ermal with eyes that every puppy would be jealous of, and a gaze that just couldn't be said no to. So Ermal stood up, sorting out his legs with a little difficulty, and then helped Fabrizio to his feet too, the man stumbling a little when Ermal pulled him up so he nearly would have ended up in his arms. But he caught his balance, in the last second, and asked Anita about who the teams for the football match would be before Ermal had the chance to even meet his eyes.

Anita then informed them about who would be playing against whom, and that Ermal should be the goalie of the team opposing hers; her little face trying for a challenging gaze when she explained this, and Fabrizio felt like he could melt from the sheer sight alone. He took his spot next to an old oak tree, waited until every kid had found their position on the field and Ermal between two smaller trees standing just a few meters away, and then Fabrizio officially opened the match, whistling between his teeth.

In the end, Anita's team won with three goals in advance, mostly thanks to Libero and a little girl with short red hair, who both had managed to score against Ermal twice. It had been an adorable sight for Fabrizio, all those children running around each other and then attacking his friend in the goal; his own two kids sometimes passing the ball so fast that Ermal was left with nothing to do but looking up a little confused from beneath his curls when they had managed to get past him once again.

After the match, everyone was exhausted and hungry, so Fabrizio decided it would be a good time to eat the remaining food he had brought along, and there nearly was none left, after a horde of starving and laughing primary schoolers had laid eyes on the snacks that Fabrizio had prepared. The rest of the day seemed to pass in a blur; they watched the kids playing another game, singing a few songs that Fabrizio mostly hadn't heard before, and when it started to get dark, they packed their stuff together again, Fabrizio checking thrice if they actually had put everything back into their bags and all the trash into the bin.

On the way back to Fabrizio's flat, the first children already started yawning, so it was a good thing that some parents already were waiting to pick their little darlings up - Fabrizio and Ermal exchanged a few polite greetings with them, and then guided the remaining children back up to the flat. There, they started to play a game of catching each other, and even though Fabrizio reminded them to be careful, one of the boys ran into a side table, causing a plate that had been lying on top of it to shatter to the ground. Fabrizio was quick to ask him if he had hurt himself, which luckily wasn't the case, and then carefully cleaned up the pieces with a little broom that Libero had quickly brought him. When he stood up again, the kids already occupied with something else, Fabrizio's gaze met Ermal's, and there was something in his friend's eyes that awoke the strong urge in Fabrizio to walk over to the younger man, stand next to him, place a comforting hand on his back without any words needed to get his support across.

When the last kid had been picked up and both Anita and Libero had fallen asleep on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket that Fabrizio knew he hadn't placed around them, he took a deep breath, and smiled an exhausted but nevertheless deeply heartfelt smile at Ermal. The other man returned it, and after smoking a quick cigarette, then said goodbye, waving off Fabrizio's thanks for the help during the day as if it had been nothing.

Fabrizio then carried his children to their beds, kissing both of their foreheads gently, and went to lay down in his own, falling asleep nearly the second his head hit the pillow. His dreams that night were filled with laughter and fluffy clouds dancing around each other in a soft blue sky...


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We finally find out what Andrea's good idea was... 👀

Once he had returned home, Ermal sat down at his balcony wrapped in a blanket he had snatched from his little sofa, and smoked a cigarette. And another one. And another one. He witnessed the smoke curling towards a dark sky, not a star visible through the clouds and the subtle light the city never stopped emitting, not even this late at night; the smoke slowly fading into nothingness. Ermal felt his nerves slowly calming down, but for his tiredness, or rather the lack of it, nothing could be done - his thoughts were too loud, questions too pressing, to let them go now.

Ermal watched the cars pass by, counted them, and making himself smile with that, for old time's sake - once they had moved to Italy, there had been no sheep to count, but sometimes, he'd sit at the window with his siblings at night, counting cars. Just for the sake of it, to get Rinald and Sabina a little tired, as a fun game. Or, and those nights he remembered the most vividly, waiting for their mom to come home. Rinald would ask when she'd be back, looking at Ermal with wide eyes, and he'd hug his brother, promise that it probably wouldn't be even thirty more cars passing before she'd be home, or only two yellow ones to be spotted until they could get a good night's kiss. And usually, it had worked - maybe the car count Ermal estimated wasn't always right, but what it always did was managing to make his siblings smile.

In the dark, all the cars were grey, so Ermal only could suspect how many in yellow he had seen, but once he felt like his blanket wasn't quite warm enough anymore, he moved back inside, wearing it like a cape for the few steps. With a nice cup of tea for company and freshly showered, Ermal then curled into his bed, and laid on his back; staring at the blank ceiling as if it would offer answers to the questions that got repeated in his mind like a good song.

And additional to those, there also were some answers, or at least valid guesses - Ermal knew he had had a very nice day, was convinced that he really had been able to be a help to Fabrizio, and suspected that they actually were on the best way to become friends. Maybe even good friends, judged by how very at ease Ermal had felt in the other man's company the whole day. And maybe, just maybe... 

Ermal turned around, to lay at his side, and purposefully, with a dramatic sigh, closed his eyes. Another attempt to fall asleep, as if he could give his own mind the command to shut up now, tell himself that there might be a time for speculations, but it certainly wasn't at nearly 3am, when emotions were vulnerable and hopes high.

After some more minutes spent tossing around in his bed, Ermal actually fell asleep; his by now cold tea forgotten on the upside down wooden wine box he used instead of a nighttable. He didn't dream that night, or at least he couldn't remember any dreams once he woke up again, at a late Sunday morning, but there was a soft smile lighting up his face when he blinked his eyes open. With a sigh, Ermal stretched, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and shortly after, heard his phone ring. A moment of searching and finally, a hand extended towards a little pile of socks next to the bed later, he saw a silly picture of Andrea sticking out his tongue at him from the screen, and immediately answered the phone call. It was one of the things he had started doing as a consequence of recent events, to usually stop the silent mode of his phone as soon as he got home, and to try to never be too lazy or distracted or whatever to answer the call of a friend. So Ermal pressed down at that tiny green phone, and his ears got filled by Andrea's excited voice.

“Listen Ermal, I still have to tell you about my idea, and it’s getting time sensitive now, so I hope I’m not calling at a wrong time now. Marco already agreed, so really we are just waiting for your ‘yes’. Which will come, because it’s an amazing idea!”

Ermal breathed out and let himself fall back in the pillows again. This would take some time. At least the idea couldn’t be too bad, if Marco had agreed to it. Usually he was the sensible one out of them. Lying down again, Ermal couldn’t suppress a yawn. This somehow got Andrea’s attention.

“Wait,  _ am  _ I calling at the wrong time? How did it go with Fabrizio?” 

Ermal didn’t know if it was just his imagination, or if Andrea’s voice had really turned a little suggestive in those questions.

“Everything was fine, I helped with his daughter’s birthday party,” Ermal said, hoping Andrea would go back to his “time-sensitive proposal” because he found he didn’t quite like their current topic. Andrea wasn’t quite done though.

“Late night, was it?”

“Not really. I only just woke up.”

“Hmm, the question is  _ where  _ did you wake up?”

“Andrea!” 

That Ermal could hear the barely contained laughter in his words didn’t mean that comments like that were welcome, not when he had echoes of those questions of last night still in his mind. 

Andrea only chuckled at Ermal’s scandalized, exasperated tone.

“I’m just joking - you had a good time then? You talked? Everything is okay now?”

Ermal nodded, even though Andrea couldn’t see that. Then he added, “We did, and yeah, everything is good. He’s really nice. And I met his family, they’re really nice too.”

Luckily for Ermal, Andrea was kind enough not to make any further jokes about that, even though it would have been so easy, and he also ignored Ermal’s rather diminished vocabulary size. Instead, he continued, or rather, finally came to the point of his call.

“So okay, my plan. It’s great! Really, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before!”

Here Andrea trailed off again, and Ermal knew it was now his job to ask for more information. He couldn’t say he minded, he was actually getting curious what Andrea had in mind, and with it being time sensitive, he assumed it had something to do with his up to now pretty empty Sunday afternoon. He rather wanted to know what he was supposed to be doing today, so he could mentally prepare himself - and who knows, physically, because with Andrea you never knew what was gonna be happening.

“What is it, then? Andrea, tell me,” Ermal said, smiling, feeling secure in how he knew how these conversations always played out.

“I found the perfect thing for us today with the weather as it is -”

“The weather?” Ermal interrupted him.

“The rain, Ermal, anyway, as I was saying,” Andrea continued, as Ermal shot a glance at the window, that was still covered by the curtain, letting light in, but no information whatsoever on the weather conditions outside. But if it was raining today, he and Fabrizio had been very lucky with the weather the day before. Ermal smiled, but then quickly focused on Andrea again, before he lost all sense of what he was telling him.

“We obviously can’t go out and play football or something like that, and so what could we do? I found the answer!”

“Andrea, tell me, please,” Ermal said again, hoping his friend wouldn’t make him guess. He didn’t have a single clue what this idea was going to be.

“We’re going to an escape room! I already booked it and everything, and as I said Marco has agreed too. It will be so much fun!”

There was a silence of a few heartbeats as Ermal tried to wrap his head around that.

“An escape room?”

“Oh come on, Ermal, you know what those are, you’re not living in the middle ages!”

Ermal scoffed. “I know what an escape room is! Just, how did you get this idea?”

“Because it will be fun! We’ll be private investigators, and we’ll be so cool solving all the mysterious crimes!”

“Have you done it before? An escape room?”

“No,” Andrea admitted, “But it can’t be that hard!” 

Ermal chose not to comment on that last remark, because knowing them, and the trouble they for example once had building a lamp that couldn't consist of more than five pieces, he wasn't too sure that the escape room would be all easy. But what it did indeed was sounding like it would be fun, so Ermal agreed to go, and heard the happy smile in Andrea's voice when he explained how to get to the place. 

After they said goodbye, Ermal got ready for the day and made himself some scrambled eggs, which he ate wrapped in an extra sweater at the kitchen table, his eyes fixed on the steady rain outside of the window. It didn't look like the weather had an intention to change at any time soon, and suddenly, the thought how lucky they had been yesterday again struck Ermal's mind. He couldn't imagine how they would have dealt with all those children indoors, or if Fabrizio even had a backup plan for activities that didn't need the generous space, soft grass and overall carefreeness of the park. Though, knowing him a little, and having witnessed how well everything else had be planned, Ermal guessed that he had.

The hours passed quickly between tidying his flat, answering some emails, calling his grandma and writing a shopping list; all things that Ermal probably wouldn't have time during the next few days, because work promised to be rather busy. He was glad to have gotten most of the things from his to do list done today, even if he still hadn't found a new winter jacket, but maybe he also could look for one in the city at the next weekend, that should work. Today, an umbrella seemed to be the most important tool anyways. When Ermal looked at his phone to check the time the bus towards the escape room place Andrea had told him would leave, he saw the notification that he had a new text message, and that made his interest peak up. Because it was from no one but Fabrizio.

_ "Thanks again for yesterday!" _

Ermal stared at the few words, smiling, and just when he was about to answer, a second message announced itself with a little plinging sound.

_ "You've really been a great help there, don't know what I'd have done without you" _

The smile didn't leave Ermal's face when he changed apps to look for the bus, and he decided to answer Fabrizio later. And maybe by then, he already could tell him a little about the adventure in the escape room - yes, he would do that, their friendship seemed to be at a level to just share random stories out of one's life, and Ermal realized that he  _ wanted _ Fabrizio to know what he was up to, to be a little part of his life in that way. And if his new friend would see how smart he was to hopefully solve a tricky case full of riddles, that also wouldn't hurt.

After a last look at the rain, which hadn't changed at all, Ermal wrapped himself in a rain jacket, and put his beanie on his head, thinking back to how he nearly had lost it only for a split second. It managed to keep his curls mostly dry on the way to the bus stop which he might have spent running, and, once arrived, Ermal was relieved that he only had to wait another minute. The bus took him out of the city center, towards a region with mostly industrial buildings, and when Ermal got out, the only person to leave the bus at the station in question, he looked around skeptical. Everything here seemed rather abandoned, and he was just about to check the address again as he spotted two figures under an umbrella across the street, one of them waving enthusiastically.

Ermal joined his friends, hugged each of them quickly and was just about to say a  _ Hello  _ when Andrea already started talking.

"Ermaaal, I would have thought at least you knew how to dress for such a place, if Marco already let me down!"

"What?", Ermal didn't understand a word, but he saw Marco rolling his eyes, and heard the not fully convincing seriousness in Andrea's voice so it couldn't be too bad.

"We're detectives today! Don't you think we should look like them too?", and with a triumphant smile, Andrea pointed towards his own head.

Where, as Ermal was noticing only now, not one of his usual caps was resting, but a... he wasn't even sure how this kind of hat was called, but it looked rather weird, and like something you'd expect an old man from Britain to wear, not over-excited young Italians. And it also looked like...  _ Oh _ .

"You're seriously wearing a Sherlock Holmes hat?"

"Absolutely!", and Andrea took the thing off to show it to Ermal, "It's called a deerstalker!"

"Wonderful. But Andrea, didn't you say we're supposed to be  _ private _ investigators, as in, trying not to stand out too much?"

"That's... details, not too important. What counts is that this will help me think! And now let's get inside, before all of our brains freeze!"

Ermal and Marco exchanged an amused glance before Andrea led the way into a building that looked as if the last time a human had stepped inside it would have been decades ago, with broken glass windows and graffiti at the walls, up a creaking staircase, and Ermal was rather surprised when they suddenly were greeted by warm electric light on the second floor. A little sign next to a new wooden door had the name of the escape room company written on it, and with an excited smile, Andrea knocked at the door.

At the answer, they walked in, finding two guys behind a desk. Ermal noticed them pause on Andrea’s hat, like of course they would.

“We’re here for the escape room!” Andrea announced proudly.

“I don’t think I have to ask which one,” one of the guys replied drily. “But just to check, name of Vigentini?”

“Shh, that’s a secret!”

Ermal met Marco’s eyes and rolled his own as they were led through the narrow corridors of the building.

“Here we are. Okay, come in. Have you ever done an escape room before?”

All three of them shook their heads, Andrea placing a hand on the hat to keep it from moving. 

“Great. So there’s a few things you should know beforehand. You’ll get an hour and a half to solve the room, you can ask us for hints if you need them, there is absolutely no shame in that. Importantly, the room is never locked, you can go out whenever you want, for whatever reason. There’s cameras for security reasons, they have nothing to do with the puzzles, there is no hints connected to them whatsoever, please don’t touch them. Then, you only need to use objects once for a hint, whenever you’ve used the information, you can be sure you won’t need it again. Well, I think that’s it, do you have any questions?”

There was a brief silence, before Andrea asked excitedly, resembling a puppy more than ever, “Can we start?”

The guy nodded, and left the room, closing the door behind him. Marco, Andrea and Ermal spun around in circles trying to take in as much of the room as quickly as possible. They found themselves in a square room, quite dark, and it looked to be the office of the private investigator. There was a big desk in the middle of the room, a number of objects on it. The wall behind it was taken up by a fake window covered by thin curtains, lights behind it simulating car’s headlights. One of the other walls was hidden behind a series of bookshelves, filled with books and other items, too much to take in at a first glance. Opposite that, the wall was covered in the biggest bulletin board Ermal had ever seen, pictured tacked to it and red string connecting different pictures.

Ermal closed his eyes for a second, he had no idea where to start. How did you solve riddles if you didn’t even know what the question was? There was so much stuff, so much that could possibly mean something, so much that probably was just there for distraction. How would they get anywhere?

Luckily, Marco seemed to have a better plan than stare in despair until the items started talking, and assembled them in the middle of the room.

“Andrea, leave that for now, we have to make a plan. So we probably first need to solve the code on the lock of this drawer, and that will give us the next clues. Do you have any ideas for that?”

Andrea was again distracted by the book on different codes and cryptolects that Marco had tried to get him away from just before, and didn’t answer. Ermal just looked in awe at the lock on the drawer, that he hadn’t even noticed yet.

Marco looked between the two of them for a second, before giving up.

“You guys are useless! We need a four digit code, so just look for anything with four numbers.”

He started by rummaging through the objects on the desk, while Andrea sank down in the chair with his book.

“There’s words underlined! And page numbers circled! I bet we’re going to need this information!”

He leafed through the book wildly, calling out words and numbers randomly. Marco’s attention had peaked for a second at the mention of numbers, but as Andrea quickly passed the sixth number, he turned back to the desk again. Those numbers in the book were useless, at least for now.

Ermal turned to the wall lined with shelves, inspecting the books and the items on there. For now, he left the books aside, it would take too much time to go through all of them, but he paid close attention to the objects. There was a little vase of fake flowers, maybe the colours would mean something? Some picture frames, with what looked like holiday pictures. There was a family on an old fashioned ship, the same family on top of some tower, looking out over a city, the children before what Ermal recognized as the little mermaid. The boy in a football shirt, standing in a stadium, looking at the camera with a bright smile. Finally, the whole family again, standing in front of a lighthouse. He turned the frames around and upside down, looking for any signs that they might give a hint. He tried to order them based on the children’s ages, but the pictures were taken too close together and he was not so good at guessing ages.

Finally, he moved on, with a last look at the pictures that didn’t want to tell him anything. Next, behind a potted cactus that looked a bit sad, he found some glasses. Those would help him! Ermal put them on, and they were a bit blurry, but they would no doubt help decrypt some hidden message somewhere. Maybe with that strange hologram technology, or 3D effects… Something, at least, he was on the right way!

Ermal picked up a book, trying to see if the glasses worked on that, but the letters were just smudgy and unclear. He kept leafing through it, though, reading a bit here and there, sure he was about to make the discovery that would save them all.

“Okay, I opened the drawer!” Marco suddenly called out, and Ermal and Andrea looked at him, surprise on their faces.

“But how?” Andrea asked, and continued excitedly, “Did I say the right numbers?”

“No, here on the desk there were some dice, and when I put them on the right side and in the right order, they formed the code to open the lock. Now, let’s see what’s next.”

Both Andrea and Ermal moved next to Marco, glancing over his shoulders into the opening drawer as if it would hold the answers to all of their questions. The wood creaked while opening, and Marco needed to apply a little more pressure, until it finally was open, and he could take out a worn down blue folder inside. Three pairs of curious eyes inspected the folder, no more information on it available than the name of G. Chiellini and the two dates in an elegant handwriting.  _ May 2018 - February 2019 _ it read, and after Ermal had insisted to have another look with his new glasses, no new information revealing itself, Marco flipped open the folder. Inside, they found four newspaper articles, and Andrea quickly snatched one of them and sat down at the floor with his back to the desk to read it.

"Okay, so this article is telling about a case of a stabbed man who was found in the Tiber, and how Mr. Chiellini managed to catch the murderer, some mafia killer", Marco summarized a moment later, after having read an article himself.

"When was it published?", Andrea asked, his eyes getting caught at the date written on top of the article he had been reading.

"7th September 2018. Yours?"

"This one says 10th February 2019. And they write how the three children of a private detective named Chiellini went missing, not a hint on what might have happened. Ohhh, maybe we need to find the children? What about you, anything helpful? Ermal?", and Andrea turned to his friend when there was no answer.

Ermal's eyes were fixed on the article, an unamused frown on his face.

"How can someone become a journalist who can't even write a proper Italian sentence? They mention a statue of Santa Caterina d'Alessandria, in front of which a young couple brutally got robbed in November, but whoever wrote this article said  _ Santa Katherines _ , this doesn't even make sense if you ignore that it's the English spelling", he muttered under his breath, and Andrea looked towards Marco in question.

Marco shook his head, and picked up the last article, to read it together with Andrea. In this case, Mr. Chiellini had helped the police to catch an arsonist, in late January, and the article ended with a sentence about how the private detective was rumored to have taken on a big case somewhere out of the country, which was the reason why the reporter hadn't been able to reach him for a personal statement.

" _ As soon as we can contact him again, we'll of course inform our dear readers of the newest adventures of one of our city's heroes, an silent fighter for justice in the dark night _ ", Marco finished reading, and Andrea chuckled.

"This sounds like out of the worst newspaper I can imagine, like, whom do they think this dude to be, Batman?"

While Marco laughed about that statement, Ermal, who had listened to what his friend read out too, huffed again.

"They certainly can't write any better than the one I was reading."

"Huh?", Marco's attention was caught by that.

"You just said  _ an silent fighter _ , that  _ an _ doesn't fit there."

"Oh come on, the people making those escape rooms can't all have a degree in language and journalism, let's not get angry about this", Andrea said, trying to lay a pattern out of the articles, sorted by the dates, but Marco waved his hand through the air to get him to stop.

"No, no, this isn't the place where we should believe in coincidences. What if this is exactly what we should find, those not matching words in the articles?"

"Ohhhhhhhh", and Andrea's eyes turned wide, while Ermal joined him at the table, quickly scanning over the articles he hadn't read so far.

"Okay, so we've got  _ an _ and  _ Katherines _ , and, aha!", Ermal pointed to the article about the stabbed man, " _ of _ here, that should be written with a double f, but there only is one."

Next, everyone gathered around the last article, the one about the missing children, this one with way more polished and elegant sentences than the others, as if it was taken out of a newspaper to actually be taken seriously.

"Ermal? This weird word with an A, does that fit here?", Andrea suddenly asked, his voice a whisper, as if this was the biggest secret he ever had talked about.

"Abundance? Well, I guess you can use it like this, maybe, though it doesn't really sound good? This actually might be it! How did you-?"

But while Ermal still talked, Andrea already had sprung up and ran over to the bookshelf. His friends quickly followed him, both without a clue what they even were looking for.

"Green!", Andrea told them, his eyes shining, as if that one word would explain everything, and for a moment, Ermal wondered if there was an idea that made sense behind this at all.

"Andrea, you know how much I appreciate you, but if you suggest now that we collect all books with a green cover or something the like, without any explanation, I'm going to-", Marco started, but Andrea shook his head.

"Marcooo, come on, trust me for once, I'm really sure I've solved this one!  _ An abundance of Katherines _ , that's a book, by author John Green, and I'm sure if we just find that one, there'll be the next hint!"

"Oh. Andrea, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply-"

"Now shut up, it's fine, and we don't have time!", and with that and another excited smile, Andrea turned back towards the bookshelf.

In the end, it was Ermal who found the book, taking it out of the shelf with his heart beating fast in excitement, and then he handed it to Andrea. The younger man's eyes turned wide for a second, then he took the book, and smiled at Ermal, before he opened it and started flipping the pages. After looking through it for a moment, he found a folded piece of paper, which he proudly presented to Marco and Ermal.

"Look at this, it's just like in the movies!", Andrea exclaimed in delight, as soon as he saw the letters cut out of newspapers glued to the paper.

" _ Revenge is best served cold, and if you're not quick in catching me, your little angels will be just as cold as mine, and as the walls surrounding them. _ ", Marco read out, and then turned to Andrea, "So we indeed need to find the children, and you've solved this task, that was amazing!", he added with a fond ruffling of Andrea's curls.

Andrea smiled brightly, and then looked around, his eyes already looking for the next clue.

"Maybe the hat does help indeed", Ermal said with a chuckle, and while Andrea gave him a thumbs up, Marco chose to ignore the comment, or he wouldn't have been able to not say a word or two about the silly glasses that Ermal still was wearing. They continued their search for clues in the room, and suddenly, Ermal caught himself wondering if they also did rooms like this for children. He should ask about this later, and if yes, tell a certain dad he knew about it...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We actually never planned Andrea to have some big idea, but as all the comments expected him to, we had to come up with something cool :) We'd love to hear what you think of this, and anything else you have to say about the fic so far, because you never know what your comments will lead to!


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We're back in the escape room, and there's not much time left to find the missed children! Will Ermal and his friends manage within the time, or are the kids lost forever?

There wasn’t any time to lose. Almost half the time was gone, and they still had to find the children. Andrea was still standing around with the book in his hands, but Ermal took it from him and put it back on the shelves.

“The guy said we only need objects once for a clue, this was our clue for what to do next. We know what we have to do, we have to find those children!” 

“But how?” 

Ermal shrugged, he didn’t know. He looked at Marco, Marco who was so good at all these cryptic hints. He’d know what do next, right?

“I don’t believe we don’t have to use anything of the bulletin board… It can’t all be for distraction and decoration,” he muttered, staring at the wall. “I just don’t know what we’re looking for.” 

Andrea and Ermal joined him, also staring at the wall. It was a big mess of newspaper articles, pictures, profiles on people - suspects? - and handwritten notes that didn’t make any sense at all, sometimes joined by the red thread.

Ermal looked at the texts with his glasses and without, but it didn’t help. Andrea followed the thread and tried to figure out if it meant anything, without any luck. Marco read through the profiles, wondering how that could help them on, and help them find the children.

The three of them stood there, more and more frustrated as the minutes ticked by, but the solution did not come any closer. It seemed they had started quite well, even when the riddles seemed to be hard, but at least they had solved them.

“Think of those poor children!” Ermal said, as if any of them needed a reminder what the stakes were.

“I  _ am _ thinking of them! But this is just impossible. There’s nothing here that could be a single hint!” Marco exclaimed, “It’s just weird facts and details, I mean, ‘Likes to read the dictionary in his spare time to check whether the letters of the alphabet are moving around’, it’s ridiculous!”

Ermal now also turned to reading the profiles. Marco was right, they were strange.

‘Favourite food: potato peel pie.’ 

‘Favourite holiday destination: neverwhere.’

‘Hobby: hitchhiking in the galaxy.’

“Wait,” he said slowly, things now clicking in his mind. “It’s so obvious!” 

Andrea and Marco stared at him.

“Care to share your genius insight?” Andrea asked curiously, while Marco turned back to the profiles on the wall. It took a few seconds, in which Ermal looked at him expectantly, but then he didn’t disappoint.

“Oh!” A smile started on his lips.

“What, what, what?” Andrea asked them, looking between him, almost hopping on his feet.

“They’re books,” Ermal said only, while Marco moved over to the bookshelves on the other side of the room, taking out the books that the profiles referred to. Ermal called some more out to him, until he was sure that they had caught them all.

“Now what?” 

They stared at the shelves, now with gaps in them where the books used to stand, but otherwise nothing had changed, nothing was happening. Ermal approached the shelves, inspecting them. He couldn’t have been wrong, could he? Otherwise those profiles really didn’t make any sense at all, and it couldn’t be a coincidence that all books had been there in the bookcase.

Marco had gone back to the bulletin board, muttering to himself. Andrea was hovering next to Ermal. 

“But what do you think should happen?” 

“I don’t know. Something. Anything.”

Suddenly he saw that in the gaps there were little switches, like on a lamp. Maybe that was the solution? He switched them, one by one, making sure he didn’t skip any or do them twice. With his heart beating in his chest, he flipped the last one, almost holding his breath to see what would happen.

Again, nothing.

Ermal let out a disappointed sigh. “It had to be that, I don’t know what else it could be!”

Marco joined them again, none the wiser after his second look at the board. 

“Do you think it’s something about the order of the switches?” he suggested, though he so very much hoped it wouldn’t be, it was too complicated.

They stood there, staring at the shelves, waiting for it to give its secrets away, for the moment defeated.

At least, until Andrea stepped forward, took the book from before,  _ An Abundance of Katherines _ , off the shelves again, and triumphantly flipped the switch that was hiding on the shelf.

For a second there was nothing happening, but then there was a click, loud in the silence of the room, a click that sounded like a door opening. And that was exactly what it was, a door opening. What had seemed just a solid set of shelves attached to the wall, was in reality not a part of the wall at all, but a cleverly concealed door, a door that opened now. Andrea pulled on the shelves to open the door further, and they could see the room beyond.

What presented itself to them was quite a contrast to the office like room they were standing in - there were rough stone walls, a chandelier covered in spider webs, and once Ermal followed Andrea into the room, he noticed that it also was colder inside here. Had he been not as caught up in the story, Ermal might have thought about how well executed this whole escape room concept was, but as it was, the only thought in his head were the three children they had to save, and to whom they hopefully would find a clue in here.

Marco was the last to come into the room, and after they all had inspected the new environment, they met underneath the chandelier.

"Okay, any ideas?", Ermal asked, looking expectantly at both Marco and Andrea.

The latter shook his head, while Marco's eyes kept skipping around, and suddenly, Ermal noticed something in his friend's expression changing, as if he would have had an idea.

"Andrea? Do you still have that letter from the book?"

"The book that  _ I _ did find?", he asked with a cheeky smile, and then handed the folded piece of paper that he had kept in his jeans pocket to his friend.

"Okay,  _ revenge... cold... _ yes we know this...  _ and as the walls surrounding them _ \- that's referring to the walls, right? His revenge is as cold as the walls, alright, and I can't be the only one who thinks that it's cold inside here, right? Come on, let's see if there's a spot at those walls that's particularly cold!"

Andrea and Ermal exchanged a glance in fascination, and then each of them went towards a different corner of the room, where they started touching along the walls. Ermal felt the rough stones underneath his fingers, and they certainly weren't warm, but there wasn't a particularly cold spot - not at the naked walls, not at the window with high curtains made of dark red velvet that refused to be opened, and also not when Ermal carefully felt the temperature of a framed painting that displayed a young and rather intimidatingly looking man; cold eyes seemingly staring out of the canvas.

"I can't find anything!", Andrea said from the other side of the room, a hint of desperation in his voice, Marco's answer was a frustrated groan, and Ermal was just about to agree with them when he noticed something.

Next to the portrait of the man with the creepy eyes, there was a world map at the wall, and when he touched his hand to this, it was as if someone had installed a block of ice behind it. This had to be the place.

"Look, over here!", and after both Andrea and Marco had confirmed that this seemed to be the clue, they tried to take the map off the wall.

With no success. It seemed to be glued to the wall, no chance of getting it off, and when Marco remarked that if they should be able to take it away from the wall, it would have gone easier, Ermal only could agree. But that didn't help them much, at least at the moment. So they kept staring at the map, searching for anything extraordinary, but there was nothing, except for a little nail driven into the little shoe that was Italy.

"Okay, so that's Rome, we're right here... maybe there should be another nail? Or there was one, do you see a hole in the map somewhere?", Marco tried, but to no success.

They stared at the map for a moment longer, and already were ready to give up on the map, at least for now, when Ermal remembered something. The hilarious glasses resting in his curls at the moment, and when he put them on once again, ignoring Marco's fond chuckle, he couldn't believe his eyes. Because there, right in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, there were words written, words that hadn't been there before. Or rather, words that had been there, but hiding in  invisibility, waiting to be brought forward by the magic of those glasses.

_ To find those you long to see again you must follow in my footsteps. _

Ermal read those words out loud, and Marco turned towards him in confusion.

"Where did this come from? Oh no, don't you tell me those ridiculous glasses-"

"They do!", and before Marco had finished his sentence, Ermal already had placed the glasses at his nose, more of a challenge than he had expected this to be, and after Marco had adjusted them, he looked at the map himself, a smile spreading on his face.

Andrea had a look with the glasses too, and while his two friends still were happy about the discovery and staring in fascination at the world map, the words hidden from their glances since Andrea was wearing the glasses, the youngest walked to the other end of the room.

"Look at this! It said footsteps, and here in this shelf, I saw a box with shoes earlier, there has to be a connection, right?", and Andrea already brought the box over to his friends, the glasses now resting in his curls.

It was an old box, dark wood showing clear signs of years of being used, and inside, around ten different shoes were to be found. Andrea turned the box upside down, so the shoes fell onto the plush carpet in a dark blood red, and after he sat down with crossed legs, he started to look at them. Ermal and Marco joined him, and what they soon did discover was that underneath every shoe, a name was written.

"Okay, so we need to find the right shoe, and then somehow put this to the map, and then we will - get a place? What for?"

"Let's worry about this later", Marco answered Ermal's question, "we first need to find out which is the right shoe, and then we can see further."

“But which one is the right shoe?” Andrea said, staring at the pile between them.

“They’re left shoes,” Ermal mumbled, but then continued more helpfully, “We’re supposed to use the names, I guess?”, and started reading them out. “Does any sound familiar? What were the names of those children?”

It wasn’t quite as easy as that, they found, the three names that were mentioned in the newspaper were nowhere to be found among the shoes.

“Wait!” Marco suddenly exclaimed, fishing three shoes from the pile. “Here, these three have the same first letters. Do you think that might be right?”

Andrea shrugged, “It’s the best we got, really, give me one?”

Marco handed out the shoes and they inspected them carefully, turning them around and around in their hands, but nothing stood out. Ermal sighed deeply, feeling the seconds tick by, those precious seconds to save the children.

“How does this relate to footsteps again? Do we have any footsteps, maybe the size has to match and we’re just wasting time right now.”

“I didn’t see any before…” Marco muttered, looking around the room.

Ermal looked around him too, figuring out if there was anything that might fit the description ‘footstep’ and help them along.

Another sigh later, he concluded that he hadn’t found anything, and looked back at his friends again. Marco was still lost in thought, gaze slowly drifting through the room, while Andrea was still focused on his shoe. He was taking out the laces, pulling them through ring by ring.

“What are you doing? I don’t think it’s going to fit you, Cinderella,” Ermal joked, though genuinely wondering about it.

“Look, on the laces here, there’s a red line! I think it’s a hint!”

“Pff, no, that’s just the pattern on the laces,” Marco started, but before he finished, Andrea dangled the freed laces in front of his face.

“Pattern? What pattern? There’s only one line. And look, when I put the end of the lace on the map here in Rome, then we get…” Andrea carefully rotated the lace, until it ended on a name. “Romania?”

“Romania?” Marco repeated, and Ermal followed, “What’s in Romania?”

“The children, I suppose,” Andrea said, “Nothing else fits as well.”

“So now we know where they are… But how do we save them?” Ermal sighed.

They were silent for another moment, and then, suddenly, what before had seemed to be just another space of rough brick wall came to life, and turned out to be a little screen. Announcing that they only had twenty minutes left, accompanied by a rather threatening music, and Andrea stared at it in shock.

"What are we supposed to do now?", the youngest asked, his eyes still glued on the bright neon green numbers, seconds ticking by, until Marco placed a hand on his shoulder, steadying him.

"Just what we've been doing before. We got this, we've been doing okay so far I'd say, and we'll save those children. We just shouldn't waste any time."

Finally forcing his eyes away from the proof of their time running out, Andrea turned on his heels, looking around the room once more.

"Okay, there's more stuff here, I'm sure we need to use something from it to solve this", and while he still spoke, Marco and Ermal already had split up to search the room once more. Ermal spotted a basket filled with various fruits in a shelf next to where Andrea had found the shoes, and his confusion about this particular item hadn't quite settled yet when someone else made a discovery, but he forgot about it when Marco called out for them. 

Marco was standing in front of a cupboard at the opposite wall - a cupboard that had wanted to seem empty, had tried to do so really hard, but Marco's eyes had been too sharp to be fooled. Because one of the pieces of wood making up the cupboard was way thicker than the others, and after carefully touching around it for a bit, the plank partly opened, to reveal a little secret storage space inside.

"Look at this!", and once Andrea and Ermal were with him, Marco handed out everything he found inside the cupboard and they laid it out on the ground.

There were different folded papers coming to the light that turned out to be a large family tree written in black curvy letters on cream coloured paper, with little painted pictures and everything, plus a few city plans printed on paper so thin that Ermal was afraid he might break them from just looking at them.

"Okay, this family seems to be rather weird", Andrea chuckled, and then pointed out a few people on the family tree.

And indeed, some things seemed unusual - there was a woman with facial features resembling those of a snake, what looked like conjoined triplets, an empty picture with a name beneath it anyway, and then, a man that seemed to appear in every generation, just with different first names. Or maybe it just was a line of fathers and sons looking alike, but  _ this _ huge family resemblance, no, this usually didn't happen. Especially not with features as unusual as those, with eyes so wide and ears so pointy that they nearly didn't seem human. They stared at the family tree, at all the unusual individuals there, but then, with a huff, Marco turned away from it and towards the other papers they had found.

Ermal just was busy reading the names on the family tree once again when he heard Marco's triumphant shout, and then looked over to see his friend's face smiling in excitement.

"I think I've got it!", and once he had all of his friend's attention, Marco turned the paper in his hands towards the chandelier hanging down from the ceiling.

Under the light, it was even more obvious how very thin the paper was, and that this might be just the hint they had been looking for. Because there were certain points on the map that were circled, sights probably, and they made up a pattern. A pattern that certainly had to mean something.

"Okay, this is great, but how will we know which map we need? And what to do with it?", Andrea asked, staring at the pattern of the map of Prague in his hands.

"But it's so easy!", and Ermal started swaying the piece he just had picked up in front of his friends faces, "Bucharest, this is the capital of Romania! I'm sure this is it!"

Both Andrea and Marco cheered upon hearing this, and then, Ermal placed the map of Bucharest on top of the family tree, to see if the pattern lined up with anything on it. But sadly, that wasn't the case, for the map was too small to cover the whole of the family tree, or to connect any people in a way that made sense. Ermal huffed in frustration.

"Oh, why doesn't this fit, it's the capital, this one  _ has _ to be the right map!", Ermal exclaimed, while turning the map around another time on top of the family tree.

"And what if it needs to be put somewhere else?"

"Huh?", Ermal turned towards Andrea, who seemed deep in thoughts.

"What if we need to apply the map to something that isn't the family tree?", Andrea said while looking around, and his eyes landed on the portrait of the young man on the wall at the same time as Marco's.

Marco had sat closest to it, so he was the first to jump to his feat and walk over there, and after a quick inspection of the picture of the man who didn't seem to have bathed in sympathy, he turned around with another brilliant smile.

"Ermal, give me this map, I'm sure Andrea just had a very bright idea", and while Andrea blushed at this, Ermal handed over the Bucharest paper to his friend.

"Now look at this", and Marco showed them something.

In the corner of the painting, there was a little text written, mostly the young man's titles, which were quite a lot. (And Ermal was unsure if all those places actually did exist and one could be a Duke of them, but that wasn't the point.)

The map of the Romanian capital fit right on top of that text, the spots in it now highlighting certain letters, and Ermal felt another rush of  adrenaline in his veins, even more so when he connected the letters that were being pointed out by the sights of Bucharest.

"Frozen in time", Ermal read the letters out loud, and then looked towards his friends, who seemed just as lost as him about what this might mean.

"Frozen in time", Marco repeated, already seeming deep in thoughts, "well, it  _ is _ pretty cold in here, but what can it mean, how-"

"Age!", Andrea suddenly shouted, and faced with the confusion in both of his friends faces, then explained: "If it is frozen then it doesn't age! What if it's the weird uncle on the family tree, the one who always looked the same except for having different names? What if it's really the same person all the time?"

"Ohh", Ermal's eyes widened once again, "Yesyesyes, brilliant", and he ran back to the family tree on the carpet, "Now tell us why you don't age, Jonathan, or Bram, or Gabriel, or whatever your name-"

"Ha!", and this time it was Marco who had been struck by a sudden idea.

"Tell us, tell us!", Andrea insisted, nervously glancing towards the clock, which now displayed not even five minutes left.

Marco grinned at Andrea, and then pointed towards one of the multiple pics of the same strange figure: "Bram S., look at this! It's a vampire!! Bram Stoker, he wrote Dracula! And there's a Jonathan in the book, Jonathan Harker, and this all fits, with the whole setting and the Romania! The kids were kidnapped by a freaking vampire!"

For a moment, there was stunned silence, and then Ermal slowly turned back towards the painting at the wall, swallowing, and spoke in a low voice: "So he's a vampire. He got turnt into one by the one from the family tree, it has to be him, he's rich and of blue blood, or was, this matches with the whole castle setting!"

Andrea stood by Ermal's side, glaring at the portrait of the probably vampire, his cold eyes glaring at them.

"But how does that help us now? How do we save the children?", Marco whispered, trying to not let frustration slip into his voice.

They looked at each other again, feeling the seconds tick by as if it was the lives of the poor children in the claws of the blood-thirsty shadow, and then, just when Andrea was throwing his hands in the air in helplessness, a voice sounded in the room, from towards the screen in the wall. A voice that Ermal might have recognized as the one of the man who had given them their introduction to the escape room, hadn't he been so captured in the story.

"Capture him with what can defeat him", the voice advised, and the young men all got stunned.

Until, once again, it was Marco who had an idea.

"It's so easy!", he whispered, while going over towards the shelf where Andrea had taken out the shoe box.

The shelf which also contained the fruit basket that had confused Ermal earlier, and through which Marco now was digging feverishly. And when he held up something, both his friends understood.

Andrea snatched the string of garlic bulbs out of Marco's hand, and stumbled over until he was facing the portrait again.

"And now?", Ermal wondered, his eyes flickering towards the countdown again, where time was running away like water through opened fingers.

"Release those poor souls, you despicable monster!", Andrea shouted towards the portrait, waving the garlic in front of the vampire's face, and Ermal couldn't help a chuckle.

"Capture, they said capture, but how", Marco mumbled, and then, Ermal's eyes spotted something.

"Look!", and he pointed towards a small nail, not unlike the one that had been placed into the world map, "It's right above the painting! Andrea, put the garlic on that nail!"

The young man got onto his tiptoes, fumbled a moment until the garlic was placed above the picture, and... nothing happened. At least for a second. Then, the light in the room started to get brighter, just a tiny bit, but they were sure that they were on the right way.

"Hhh, what else, what else", Marco started to strut through the room once again, and just when he feared they'd be running out of time, he saw it.

The shoe box that Andrea had found earlier was laying abandoned next to the red carpet, and there was one thing that stood out on the dark old wood. Just one. One silver decoration, and when Marco assured himself that it was a cross, he was sure that they'd need this. When he reached out and the metal was easy to remove from the wood, his conviction only grew, and he ran back towards the painting. The last minute had started.

"It's a cross, vampires are allergic to those!", he explained, a little bit out of breath, and showed the item to his friends.

"But where to put this? Should we hang it on the nail too?", Andrea asked, but Ermal, who had taken the cross into his hands, shook his head.

With a triumphant grin starting to spread on his pale lips, Ermal stepped forward, and placed the cross at the chest of the painted man. On the left side, right above his heart. It held there, being kept in place by a magnet, and two things happened at the same time. The curtains on the window flew open, a bright imitation of sunlight shining into the cold room. And the countdown on the display stopped, at 21 seconds.

Ermal was just about to tell his friends about the little engraving on the back of the metal cross that had told him to put it in the centre of his cold cold heart when another sound was to be heard.

The three young men walked over until they all stood in front of the screen, where a video started playing. At first, they could see a man, a man they could recognize as detective Chiellini from the picture attached to one of the newspaper articles from earlier. He was pacing around a room with brick walls just as rough as the ones of the one they were standing in, and then, after a moment, a door in the wall cracked open. Sunlight filtered inside, and then, after a moment, Mr. Chiellini's children came running into the room. They hugged their father, very tightly, and with his youngest still held close in his arms, the man turned towards the camera.

"You've got my eternal gratitude for saving my children from this creature of the night. Thank you. Forever", and after that, he turned back towards the kids, showering their faces in kisses.

Then, the scene of the man and his children faded out, and after a second of being black, there were letters on the screen, in the same poisonous shade of green as the countdown had been earlier.

_ Mission accomplished. _

Ermal didn't even notice the escape room operator stepping through the door with a smile, because suddenly, he found himself in a tight embrace by his two friends. And wasn't this the best feeling in the world?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We hope you enjoyed this as much as Ermal, Andrea and Marco did, and we can really recommend going to an escape room, because they're a lot of fun!  
> Thank you for reading, and if you leave your thoughts in a comment, you'd make our day!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please leave us a comment? ❤


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